Dysfunctional doesn’t begin to describe the family at the center of “Escape from Happiness” and calling Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s play a dark comedy is like labeling Stephen King’s work “a little bit gothic.”

As presented by the University of Maine’s School of Performing Arts, Walker’s play isn’t bleak or depressing at all. It is a wild and hysterically funny roller coaster ride with a family that appears crazy but in all too many ways looks like the one most people will share Thanksgiving dinner with next week.

Tom is the father of this wacky clan. A former policeman with a bad memory and a craving for soup, he returns home to the care of his ever-optimistic wife, Nora. Of their three daughters, only Mary Ann will be in the same room with him, even though Gail and son-in-law Junior live in the same house.

As the play opens, Junior is discovered unconscious and bleeding on the kitchen floor. Soon, two police officers, bearing issues of their own, arrive to investigate. Eventually, the crooks show up, too. These apparent misfits bring not just hilarity but normalcy to this fractured family.

“Escape from Happiness” is really a familial farce. Tom Mikotowicz, director of the UMaine production, appears to never have made up his mind about whether Walker wrote a comedy with dark dramatic elements or a full-fledged farce. In the hands of his actors, the play works best when the dramatic moments are pierced by a character’s bizarre but funny reaction to it. The production falls flat when the drama overtakes the farce.

Kelly Lageroos, who plays the ditzy Mary Ann, understands this completely. A freshman, she gives the character a sweet naivete that allows her to skewer the other characters with a velvet sword of unwelcome truth. Lageroos is always able to pull the production back from the brink of maudlin when her fellow actors take their characters too seriously. She is a new student talent worth keeping an eye on.

Joshua Leigh, a junior, and Michael Thayer, a sophomore, portray father-and-son criminals with a Laurel-and-Hardy flair. A skinny guy, Leigh appears to be made of rubber as he uses his long legs and thin face to hilarious effect. Physically Leigh’s opposite – short, dark and athletic – Thayer is his delightful comic foil. These guys, like Lageroos, have their finger on the pulse of the play.

Lacey Martin as eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and Kara Szczepanski as the youngest, Gail, take their characters and the play far too seriously. Szczepanski, a freshman, captures the peacemaker roll played by many youngest children, but she gives Gail little other personality. However, her portrayal as the exhausted mother of an infant is right on target.

Instead of acting like a caped crusader slightly off course, Martin, a junor, gives Elizabeth a raging self-righteousness that gets way out of control. In her most confrontational scenes, Martin must shove and slap as well as throw her fellow actors to the floor. On opening night last week, it sounded like she really hurt them, which is inexcusable. The side of Elizabeth that Martin fails to illuminate is the analytical advocate seeking justice rather than revenge.

Unfortunately, Joy VanMeter, a senior, never finds Nora’s center, and the soft falsetto voice she gives the mother makes her sometimes difficult to hear and understand. VanMeter’s Nora is the faded version of a younger woman, but the actress never gives the audience a clue about who Nora used to be. Although she has painted her family with such an idealistic brush that Nora could be called delusional, ultimately, she is their anchor. VanMeter never portrays this woman’s inner strength.

Patrick Gleason gives the father, Tom, more depth than Walker wrote for him. The freshman actor, who looks a lot like the Irish cops in Jimmy Cagney movies, portrays Tom’s midlife transition with sensitivity but never loses the man’s macho swagger.

Janice Duy, a junior, and sophomore Dustin Sleight are good as the mismatched partners who come to investigate Junior’s beating. David Baril, a freshman, adequately portrays a man cowed by his wife’s family. Yet none of them seems to have their characters’ centers.

The set, designed by Chez Cherry, gives real substance to the production and helps keep the farce anchored in reality. Matt Guminski’s lighting design, and Jane Snider’s costumes and makeup gives the play and its characters the realism necessary to keep the production from appearing whimsical.

Despite its flaws, “Escape from Happiness” is the best production Mikotowicz has directed in several years. He seems to have an affinity for the soft, dark underbelly of familial love and, at the least for the next couple of years, UMaine has some very gifted actors able to captures those complexities.

“The End of Happiness” will be performed at noon Thursday, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday. For ticket information, call 581-1755.