"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"

King Lear would have sighed in understanding over the tribulations of poor Mrs. Savage in "The Curious Savage," by John Patrick, which opened Thursday at Lawrence Community Theatre. This play is no tragedy, but it's certainly full of some occasionally poignant and often hilarious renditions of greed and family dysfunction that the long-suffering Lear would recognize.

Mrs. Savage (Medora Davidson) has nursed a nest of vipers in her bosom in the persons of her three stepchildren, who now have her committed to a sanitarium because she wants to give away her husband's fortune to "people with dreams." After her husband died, Mrs. Savage began to exhibit alarming eccentricities: She traveled, had fun, became a terribly bad actress in a terribly bad play, and gave away money, causing extreme distress to the Savage children. Scheming to take control of the fortune, Titus (Don McIntyre), Samuel (Jon Hobble) and Lily Belle (Jane Henry) force her into The Cloisters, a private sanitarium where Mrs. Savage meets a variety of strange and wonderful friends.

There she finds Mrs. Paddy (Beverly Willis-Wyand), who "hates everything" except her painting; Florence (Trina Vincent), whose ladylike manner disguises a serious break with reality; Hannibal (George Smith), who joyously scratches away at his violin; Jeff (Jack Hope), rendered dysfunctional by personal guilt; and Fairy May (Kendra Verhage), whose wacky childlike manner covers her insecurities. Along with Dr. Emmett (Randall Parker) and his assistant Miss Willie (Alicia Ellingston), they become Mrs. Savage's new "family," one that is considerably less crazy than her own.

From Verhage's energetic Fairy May to Hope's lost and tentative Jeff, these are all solid performances, each with a bit of subtle characterization that makes these characters more than just inmates in an asylum.

McIntyre and Hobble are wonderfully evil as the corrupt senator and judge, determined to commit their mother. (Watch for their slightly peculiar habits.) Henry's Lily Belle is an oversexed bombshell of a woman whose walk through a room is not to be missed, and Davidson brings just the right amount of fragility and steel to Mrs. Savage. In all, they are a complete family of savages: biting, selfish and a touch cruel. Even Mrs. Savage gets a little of her own back at her children's expense.

The look of the play is stunning. The set design by Jack Riegle with Ron Chinn's lighting design is beautiful, filled with warm shades of red on walls and carpets that reflect the comfortable and protective setting of the sanitarium, and the costumes by Annette Cook and hairstyles by Mary Ann Saunders are just right at evoking the 1950s setting.

The performances are skillfully directed by Jeanne Chinn, who gives her talented cast room to invent fully dimensional characters out of little more than a series of psychoses. As they do so, they reveal that insanity is easier to bear when one is bound to others - not by locked doors, but by love.

- Sarah Young is a lecturer in Kansas University's English department. She can be reached at youngsl@ku.edu.