Laila

Dad's long gone. Mom's a wasted wreck. The kids are the parents - and damaged goods.

It's "Extreme Dysfunction: Home Edition" and the thesis of "That Face," a fevered psychodrama and the debut work of Polly Stenham, a British playwright who was just 19 when she wrote the 90-minute one-act.

That was four years ago. At the time, she wasn't much older than Mia (Cristin Milioti), the teenage daughter who takes her hostilities out on younger students at her posh London boarding school, where she faces expulsion. Henry (Christopher Abbott), her 18-year-old sib, doesn't have to worry about that. He's dropped out to be available 24/7 for Martha (Laila Robins), their Mommie Neediest. He's her "baby boy," bartender and bedmate. And a punching bag when he disappoints.

Stenham writes with a raw fearless streak, and Sarah Benson's production for Manhattan Theatre Club plays it to the hilt. But for all its shock and awe (including a whiff of incest and a wild and disturbingly wet mental breakdown), the play doesn't so much devastate as deaden.

Chalk that up to the familiar subject and sketchy characterizations. Did Martha become a destructive vampire because her ex-husband, Hugh (Victor Slezak), abandoned her - or is that why he left in the first place? Details and better bone structure would make "That Face" stand out.

"Graceland," a bittersweet dramedy by Chicago up-and-comer Ellen Fairey, could use more shading, too, and fewer coincidences. But the radiantly emotional performance by Marin Hinkle ("Once and Again") as a sad and beautiful lost soul makes the 80-minute play winning and worthwhile - another fine work from Lincoln Center's program for emerging writers.

The title refers to a Windy City cemetery, which surrounds the action in Henry Wishcamper's smart staging. Sara, who lives in New York, is there with her estranged brother, Sam (Matt McGrath), to bury their father, who's killed himself. It's an uneasy reunion, and noisy Blue Angels jets booming overhead in an air show don't calm any nerves.

Booze does, though. Brian Kerwin plays the ladies' man Sara hooks up with after the funeral. David Gelles Hurwitz is his teenage son, Miles, with whom Sara shares a deeper bond.

Fairey's lightly acerbic script is laced with evocative references to the power of time (Sara's lost her dad's pocket watch) and connections (Miles explains that those daredevil pilots sync their heartbeats before flights).

You root for Sara to get a better grip on both.