Entertainment

Fresh, satisfying ‘Meal’

Despite scenes that move faster than a short-order cook, the cast of “The Big Meal” — David Wilson Barnes (from left), Cameron Scoggins, Phoebe Strole, Jennifer Mudge and Anita Gillette — serves up moments of consistent poignancy. (Joan Marcus)

The new off-Broadway show “The Big Meal” is high-concept, to say the least. In just 90 minutes, playwright Dan LeFranc tracks Nicole and Sam over several generations — romance, marriage, tensions with in-laws, arguments and reconciliations, bickering offspring, births and deaths.

Directed with a sure hand by Sam Gold (“Seminar,” “Look Back in Anger”), this epic saga takes place on a bare set evoking a restaurant, and proceeds in fast-forward. It takes only 30 seconds and a blast of “Sweet Caroline” to evoke a wedding. In just a minute or two, we see parents and grandparents mix up the names of daughter Maddie’s boyfriends, neatly capturing her dithering.

Just four pairs of actors do it all, taking turns impersonating the family members at various times in their lives.

When we first see Nicole and Sam, they’re in their 20s and played by Phoebe Strole and Cameron Scoggins. Jennifer Mudge and David Wilson Barnes (“Becky Shaw”) take over when the characters are 10 to 15 years older, while veteran comedienne Anita Gillette and Tom Bloom handle the elderly parents — and eventually become Nicole and Sam at retirement age.

Rounding out the cast, Griffin Birney and Rachel Resheff, both 11, portray kids in successive generations.

Such a stunt could easily have been a hot mess, and it’s true that at times you feel as if you’re stuck in a speed-dating session. LeFranc covers major life stages in shorthand, so a traumatic death has the same weight as a quirky incident. Occasionally he also lapses into the preciousness that marred his previous effort, 2009’s “Sixty Miles to Silver Lake” — which took place entirely in a car.

But “The Big Meal” is a huge improvement. LeFranc tells us how families change with the years, how bonds sometimes weaken, sometimes strengthen. And he hits a surprising amount of grace notes, especially since the show moves along fast.

Except, that is, when it stops dead in its tracks so a character can eat a meal — in real time.

Kudos to director Gold, who confirms his steady touch when it comes to smoothing out technically complex scripts — this one includes a lot of overlapping cross-talk — and illuminating emotional battlefields. He also gets poignant turns from all the cast members. Together, they make you realize that like any big picture, a family is made of small moments.