Jackie lied to their mother; Val, that her sister, Maggie was dead. Harold, Jackie's ex, made a pass at Maggie. Jackie has become a religious extremist. Maggie's drinking got her fired. Val sings dirty songs at the kitchen table.

Don't expect them on the next "Jerry Springer," though. They populate "Brutality of Fact," Keith Reddin's melancholy comedy about the many ways we make ourselves miserable and the many ways we seek relief. The play is at the McAuley Onstage Theatre, the Theatre Company's intimate setup that puts the audience onstage with actors. This creates a temptation to reach out a sympathetic hand to the troubled women Reddin depicts. The men? They're just trouble.

In deepest despair is Jackie, seeking solace in religious rigidity the way Maggie seeks redemption in booze. Their mother; Val, has a slightly more original way of pacifying her demons: She loses track of what's going on. TV dramas help.

"I like it when they have sex and then they die," says Val. "It's very biblical."

Reddin glosses over whatever has traumatized three women to the point of dysfunction. Mostly, it seems to be death. They were a wealthy family in Boston before Val's husband died; Jackie and Maggie's sister Janet died of cancer a few months before the play begins.

A fourth sister, Kate, has moved to Guam, nearly halfway around the world; if she were any farther, she'd be closer. So, too, must be characters in "Brutality of Fact" move more into their miasmas before they can get closer to each other.

Kate and Janet show up in dream sequences directed by Mary F. Bremer with slow-motion, slow-talking hilarity.

Jackie's story is the play's core. Reddin doesn't say much about Jackie's past. He says more about about her present, but the one providing the most information is the woman playing her, Miriam Yezbick Engstrom, in face and body a battleground reflecting the conflict that rages within. Engstrom gives new meaning to the term "pregnant pause."

In splendid contrast to Engstrom's inward performance as Jackie stands Beth Short's expansive, outward Maggie, bricking over her sense of inadequacy with sharply delivered wisecracks. Yolanda Fleischer; too, is a wiseacre of the first order as Val, gleefully calling Jackie's apartment Rancho Jesus and reveling in a lewd parody of "Hawaiian Chant."