There's a problem with Lucas Kavner's "Carnival Kids". The title isn't especially good. There's another issue as well; the stage is too long to make for watching without the occasional craning of the neck. The good news is, however, that the first problem is pretty meaningless – is "The Little Foxes" a good title, after all? - and the second is a minimal price to pay when five finely-tuned actors deliver in a haunting and layered work of this quality. Your neck, in fact, will thank you.

There's an atomic nature to the play; it's a particle chamber with collisions and scary potentials. Dale, Texan dad and former rock keyboard man from the glory days of excess, comes to the city, needing the roof and sofa bed of his adopted son, Mark. The boy is a law school hyper-achiever and far too strained upon seeing dad again, and this would be drama fodder enough for many a writer. But what Kavner does, and with classically crafted finesse, is people the story with exactly the right number and kinds of additional elements, as in Mark's justly uneasy female suitor; Dale's own deceptive, new, and somewhat commercial romance; and a roommate who, in the four hands of a lesser playwright and actor, would be wearing a sign reading 'comic relief,' but who here resonates with the marvelous reality of the strange dude who is - strangely - grounded sufficiently to anchor a fellow soul or two in danger of drifting beyond reach. There is also salvation in the play because, as in particle physics, even collisions reflect need. Well done, Mr. Kavner.

To single out any performance is not right when each is so fully realized. Still. Laura Ramadel's taking of a phone call late in the game will lacerate your heart, and there is not a single wrong move from Max Jenkins as Eckland, which is no small potatoes in a role so rich in upstaging possibilities. Is this due to director Stephen Brackett's sure hand? Never mind. Just go.