Currently on stage at the Jewish Community Center is the world premiere of "Welcome to the Neighborhood," a comedy by relatively unknown playwright Hank Kimmel. According to the program notes, JCC CenterStage Artistic Director Ralph Meranto first became acquainted with Kimmel at a Jewish theater conference, where he saw his short works staged as part of a showcase. Meranto writes that he was impressed with Kimmel, and along with "Neighborhood" director Brian Coughlin, the three men set about transforming about a dozen of Kimmel's short plays into a full-length piece.

It's admirable that Meranto and the JCC are reaching out to new playwrights and giving them a much-needed break in a super-competitive field. But after watching "Welcome to the Neighborhood," I'm puzzled as to why Meranto chose Kimmel for this particular opportunity. It's not that the play is bad - it's not, it's fine. But that's it: it's fine. It's certainly well acted and directed, but the play itself is often predictable, only occasionally funny, and totally unchallenging in any way. I left unconvinced that Kimmel has anything new to say, or to add to the discussion of modern American life that hasn't been covered before. Although to be fair, that may not be the point. The point may be to entertain people with a nice, feel-good night at the theater, and on that front "Neighborhood" generally works.

The play is narrated by Andrew Hill (Jeff Siuda), a writer who takes getting laid off from his newspaper job as an opportunity to devote his life to writing plays. Kimmel uses Andrew as the very thin connective tissue that ties each of the short plays together, as Andrew explains to the audience how he came up with the starting points for his various bits.

The shorts are mostly based on observational humor, finding something funny in the absurdities of everyday life. Kimmel definitely has a feel for this. In the first short he points out how pharmacies make public what should really be a very private situation. In another, he peers into the mind of a harried soccer mom and her totally irrational dislike of the more polished mother of her daughter's teammate.

The thing is, while the set-ups are sometimes promising, the execution is often soft. Most, if not all, of the short plays in "Neighborhood" have an uplifting, aw-shucks ending, some delivered with such a heavy hand that they start to cross over into parable. Example: "Saved on the Day of Atonement," about a man running the gauntlet of hissing churchgoers while trying to find a seat at synagogue on Yom Kippur, starts out strong and with some bite, but ultimately fizzles as all of the characters magically transform into Nice People. The last piece, about how obnoxious Christmastime is for non-Christians, ends with a strident Jewish mother throwing on an elf cap and screaming "Merry Christmas!" to anyone who will listen. Playwrights regularly use comedy to make statements, but Kimmel doesn't just make them, he underlines them to ensure that the audience Gets It.

Then there are the other, less insightful shorts that are apparently just there for laughs, like the neighborhood party where nobody remembers anybody else's name, or the lazy plumber who can't keep an appointment. The best comparison I can come up with for Kimmel's comedic sensibilities is former newspaper columnist Dave Barry. If you're a fan of Barry's work - and millions of people are; the man even won a Pulitzer - you'll likely respond well to Kimmel's humor. Personally I couldn't help but note the irony in Andrew the narrator bemoaning the relatively unfunniness of "Funky Winkerbean," since most of the jokes in "Neighborhood" wouldn't be out of place in an average comic strip.

Lastly, Kimmel's voice as a playwright is wildly inconsistent. In some of the shorts his characters speak with a casual, believable vocabulary. In others, they're practically coughing up a thesaurus. You could argue that different characters should speak differently, but when the show's recurring protagonist launches into a monologue loaded with $10 words not long after trading pep-talk clich�s with his son, that's a problem. Similarly, the multitude of characters should still talk like actual human beings. In some of the shorts - what was going on in that bizarre one tangentially related to Disney? - I practically needed a translator.

That is not to say that the play is unsuccessful. It needs work, but the fact that it succeeds as well as it does is mostly because of Brian Coughlin's sharp, lively direction, and his very talented cast. Besides Siuda, the remaining actors - Jeff Lurie, Gina Menzer-Kunz, Philip Ortolani, S. Michael Smith, and Meghan Rose Tonery - all take on multiple roles, from crotchety old men to 10-year-old boys to deranged schoolteachers. It felt very much like a comedy sketch show, and like a "Saturday Night Live" or "Mad TV," there were some stand-out performances.

Menzer-Kunz practically disappeared into her many roles, transforming completely from one bit to the next, elevating every scene she was in. Right behind her was Tonery, an exuberant and likable actress who made the most of her parts, even if they weren't as flashy as others. Smith, the artistic director of Unleashed! Improv, was perhaps underutilized, but his improv background was evident as he threw himself into his various roles. Ortolani routinely overplayed his parts before intermission, but reeled it in for Act II. And while Lurie was affable and charming in many of his scenes, he also repeatedly stumbled over lines.

"Welcome to the Neighborhood"

Through January 2

JCC CenterStage, 1200 Edgewood Ave.

$16-$22 | 461-2000 x235, jccrochester.org