At the midpoint of "Family Play", the latest in the line of CollaborationTown's hive-minded theatrical creations, two teens flip tarot cards. The first is for the past, the second for the present, and the third and final for the future.  This triptych soon becomes our thematic constant for lack of a conventional narrative one. "Family" spans 35 years, countless characters, couplings, bust ups, births, deaths and all that monumental stuff in micro vignettes, the longest being two or three minutes.

Conceived of by CTown's core members (Boo Killebrew, Geoffrey Decas O'Donnell & Jordan Seavey -- with the first two also acting and O'Donnell serving as the scenic designer), "Family Play" no doubt treads into some autobiographical territory, but the line is so consistently blurred that what we have on display is the spectrum of family in all its connotations.

The piece is so chockablock with experiences -- playing doctor on a playground, overhearing an argument from the parentals, preparing for a presentation, moving in with a lover, coming out, a friends suicide, having kids, visiting a senile parent, all with the requisite narrative tentpoles of family dinners, songs and existential star gazings -- that by the time the capable ensemble of six is done stalking with purpose around the hardwood, circular stage like hands around a clock face we are struck not just with the insight of how quickly we grow up but how limited these ideas can be in the confines of a ninety-minute show.

This is not to dismiss the ambition of the project. Director Lee Sunday Evans and her cast, which also includes the wonderful Jorge Cordova, Eboni Booth, Mark Junek and Therese Plaehn, imbue the work with nuance and manage to wear Beth Goldenberg's clever costumes convincingly from the ages of eight to pushing forty. Sound by Brandon Wolcott and lights by Nick Houfek lend their best mood makers for any disparate moment the play may demand.

But this is the work of at least five memoirs and by the end, when we have exhausted scenarios and expanded our scope to the most cosmic of levels by way of a very well-delivered speech by O'Donnell, which is one mention of "star stuff" away from being a Saganism, we get just how broad the thing has become. But perhaps the play says it best. We hear the first suit drawn from the tarot deck means the person being read for is "trying to combine too much of too many things in too little time." Maybe there is something in fortune telling after all.