Joshua Conkel’s 90-minute fever dream begins with a breathlessly inexperienced narrator (Jennifer Pratt) delineating the multiple roles she’ll be playing. These include a rapacious spider named Rochelle, an evil twin living in the thigh of the play’s antagonist, Elliot (Noah Benezra), and her work translating the clucks of a chicken named Linda (Kate Sumpter) into English. At the center of it all is the irrepressible Emory, (Tim Smith-Stewart) a “sensitive” 5th-grader living on a chicken farm with his oxygen tank-toting Nanna (Troy Mink). Early on, she makes him surrender his favorite doll and suggests instead that he play with the white-trash neighbor boy, Elliot–who also happens to be a pyromaniac. There are also a few song and dance sequences to MML, because Emory is convinced his ticket off the chicken farm is an upcoming cattle call for a TV show. Director Montana von Fliss stages MML like a live-action Peanuts strip, but the stick-figure approach keeps the focus right where it ought to be–on one of the best Seattle ensemble performances in recent years. As the the bullying (and suicides) of gay youth make daily headlines, Conkel has conjured a fantasy where the events are entirely contrived and the emotions are utterly authentic. KEVIN PHINNEY [See Kevin’s full review.] EXTENDED one more weekend, Oct. 13-15.

Mondays, Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: Sept. 15. Continues through Oct. 15, 2011