“This is my mother,” says Zoë Yeoman, sliding into the skin of real-life playwright Lisa Kron and referring to an older woman (Alice Bjorklund) who had been snoring away onstage throughout the pre-show. “But this play is not about her,” she adds. This fateful statement occurs early on in arizona women’s theatre company’s production of Well, a semi-autobiographical one-woman show with an ensemble (seriously). Yeoman’s Lisa tries to fictionalize her life, make sense of a mother who had the power and energy to aid in integrating Lansing, Michigan, but now can’t seem to get out of her LazyBoy, and to examine her own recovery from constant allergic illness to wellness. But anyone who thinks that they can escape their own mother, especially when they offer them Stage Left, can’t seriously believe that the play is not about them. And it isn’t. Kind of.

This is a piece that is reminiscent in tone to another seriously funny and disturbing play earlier this season, Actors Theatre’s Thom Pain (Based on Nothing). Kron wants to prove self-sufficiency, self-actualization. She wants to celebrate her mother’s achievements while trying to figure out how to avoid her slow slide into a soporific twilight. To do so, she has enlisted four actors (African Americans Larissa Brewington and Rolando Zee and white Kandyce Hughes and Ron Phillips). She has them play out idealized scenes based on two important moments in her life: the late 1960s when her mother helped to peacefully integrate Lansing, Michigan; and a time in her life when she left college to attempt recovery in a Chicago hospital seriously treating allergies. What starts off as a straight forward presentation becomes a confrontation between reality and theatricality. Lisa finds herself constantly confronting her well-meaningly meddling mom and losing control of the performance. The result is a fascinating observation of a daughter trying desperately to cut herself away from what she views as a dying tree. It’s funny, it’s touching, and it’s often brilliant.

It is a coup for awtc to have brought this work from a highly-acclaimed run Off Broadway to the Stable Arts Theatre so soon after its run. Though low tech, the coziness of its confines adds to the audience connection to actors, characters, and subject. Director Ann Tully has used the often inhospitable space to its advantage, having the audience directly addressed often and setting up an odd tentativeness in the ensemble around Yeoman that becomes understandable as the show spirals from well-ordered to borderline absurdist.

Yeoman is wonderful. Her rigid style and ability to switch between controlling and childlike makes Lisa’s plight easy to identify with and empathize. She seems officious at first, but as she loses control, her humanity bubbles over in fits and starts. Bjorklund is a treat. She comes across in just the right matter-of-fact way to keep you believing until her hilarious turn.

Though there were some line hesitations and a few moments where the pacing grew bumpy, the play’s structure is forgiving of this. The ensemble is strong at playing a bit weakly, which may seem low-tech at first, but proves to be more about choices than abilities.