Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)

TIMBER! Gallagher disappoints groupie Wallin by telling her he doesn't know "Freebird."

Although Crumble is as feverishly ambitious as the daydreams of its moony preteen heroine, Dog & Pony thankfully grounds it with a dose of solid emotion. And while "Justin Timberlake" (Gallagher) does indeed appear in all his gelled-hair, high-pitched glory, Larson's dexterous maternal performance gravely centers a play that's as spackled and disjointed as the dilapidated apartment in which it's set. In fact, the Apartment (Gray) is a character in the play, a whiny—and horny—deus ex machina that, instead of descending in a sweeping rescue, surrounds and provokes its helpless denizens: a mother, Clara (Larson), and Janice, her 11-year-old daughter (Wallin), facing the first Christmas after the death of Janice's father in a freak holiday-decorating accident. Janice is secretly brewing up a bomb in her pink girl's tea set to greet the grim anniversary, which Clara's cat-collecting sister ineptly diagnoses as a result of boy craziness.

Playwright Callaghan is a little too in love with all this artifice, and directors Dapier and Vanderwarker abet the playwright's excesses by allowing Wallin to mug a bit too distractingly. But see this show for Gray's lissome, funny work, an embodiment of a finely detailed set by Grant Sabin, and for Larson, who, though saddled with a lot of metaphor-heavy worrying, steers the play back to its undeniable heart: the reunion of a mother and daughter fractured by grief.—Megan Powell