Katie Broad (as Julie) and Johanna Day (as Pam) in âOblivionâ by Carly Mensch, directed by Mark Brokaw, at Westport Country Playhouse.  Clearly, Julie lied. She did not spend the weekend on a college-inspection visit to Wesleyan.  In the Westport Country Playhouseâs smart, sassy and rewarding world premiere of Carly Menschâs âOblivion,â Julie (Katie Broad) has done the one thing that could upset her parents more than going on an orgy of unprotected sex, hard drugs and petty crime. She went to church. More specifically, to a religious retreat in Teaneck, N.J.  Having a 16-year-old find God â on her own â might be cause for rejoicing if Julieâs parents were born-again stalwarts. But her mother, Pam (Johanna Day), is an atheist who makes documentary films for HBO, and her father, Dixon (Reg Rogers), is a nonpracticing Jew and a potsmoking lawyer turned novelist. They live in hippest Brooklyn and are, as Julieâs pal Bernard (Aidan Kunze) points out, âlike the most open-minded, liberal people on the planet.â  You can almost see the hairs on the back of Pamâs neck bristle when Julie announces boldly, âI love Jesus now, and he loves me.â When Julie follows up by quoting a Bible verse, Pam sends her to her room and grounds her.  Ms. Mensch, best known as a television writer on the irreverent Showtime series âWeedsâ and âNurse Jackie,â enjoys making the Pams and Dixons in the audience consider the possibility that they are bigots and fundamentalists in their own way. When Julie confronts her mother with âYou think theyâre less smart,â referring to what she calls âpeople of faith,â no one has a ready comeback. Pam admits that she considers religion creepy but defends herself. âIâm a fundamentalist,â she asks rhetorically, âbecause I choose not to believe in a collective delusion?â  In Act II, Pam tries reading the Bible â the better to understand what has lured her only child to its message â but she finds that much of it just reminds her of a Hallmark card. Act II also makes clear that âOblivionâ is really about the parentsâ marriage and includes what may be the greatest definition of âstill in loveâ ever expressed on a stage or screen. âI think everyone else is lame and stupid,â Dixon reminds Pam. âYou think everyone else is lame and stupid.â Those who have felt this way for 18 years let no man put asunder. Besides, Ms. Day and Mr. Rogers share some genuinely enjoyable scenes of intense confrontation.  Mark Brokaw, who is also the director of the current Broadway production of âRodgers & Hammersteinâs Cinderella,â treats his characters with almost equal respect. Dixon is the exception; he spends all his time in his bathrobe, lies to his wife about the nature of his fiction and never attends his daughterâs basketball games. But in Act II, he is the only major character to undergo emotional development.  If âOblivionâ were a sitcom â and some might say that it has leanings â Bernardâs worship of Pauline Kael would be the requisite fluffier subplot. Bernard is a disappointment to his parents, too. They expect him to go to M.I.T. (like every other smart Asian teenager, he says), but he wants to be a filmmaker. Unfortunately, he is the only person who does not realize at first that Ms. Kael died some years ago and that his letters to her are probably piling up at some post office in the Berkshires. For Bernard, God is dead, but life must go on.  Neil Patelâs scenic design fits, culturally and socioeconomically. The enormous multipaned windows and exposed brick wall suggest that this surnameless family lives in a converted industrial building, and those elements (with steeplelike wooden beams) contribute to the aura of a house of worship when necessary. But the chairs and the wall of shelves make the main setting, the eat-in kitchen, look like an elementary school libraryâs playroom. There may be a metaphor at work here, but if so, it went over my head.  Theater audiences make various sounds during performances. Laughter is everyoneâs favorite, followed by sniffling. It is very rare to hear the kind that followed one line at a performance last weekend. With a mass intake of breath, it seemed to meld surprise, recognition, admiration, resignation, sadness and shame. Julie, preparing to self-baptize in a kiddie pool on the building roof, asks the universe, âDo things become clearer as you grow older or do you just get better at settling for smaller answers?â  âOblivion,â by Carly Mensch, is at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, through Sept. 8. Information: westportplayhouse.org; (203) 227-4177.
In âOblivion,â Carly Mensch, a writer known for her work on cable television, asks her audience to consider bigotry from a different perspective.