The damaged O'Donnell siblings in Brian Friel's "Aristocrats" understand the often painful truth that while you can go home again, sometimes it's better if you don't. No one grasps that better than Anna, the absent sister who left her once genteel Irish family's County Donegal estate for Africa 17 years earlier. She hasn't returned since, except as a disembodied voice whose cheery remembrances of times past unwittingly point out how far the family and its fortunes have fallen. She's wise to stay away. Depression, delusion, estrangement, unrealized ambition, unattainable love and alcoholism have reduced the once wealthy and important family to a shadow of its former self. Despair hangs over the crumbling O'Donnell home like fog hangs over the Cliffs of Moher in this Chekhovian drama by contemporary Irish writer Friel ("Faith Healer," "Dancing at Lughnasa"). The play lacks the richness of Friel's other works and it stumbles a bit in the second act thanks to a rushed, unconvincing ending. But Strawdog Theatre's unfussy, solidly acted production, directed by Steppenwolf's Rick Snyder (who continues to impress), is worth seeing. The show, which marks the beginning of Strawdog's 20th anniversary season, reflects its director's keen sense of intensely personal drama as well as the self-possessed, straightforward acting that characterizes the company, which earned a Jeff Citation earlier this year for best ensemble for "Marathon '33." Echoing both "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard," "Aristocrats" centers on the emotionally battered O'Donnell clan. They've reunited at the family's ancestral home -- a place of faded gentility nicely evoked by set designer B. Emil Bulous -- for the wedding of youngest daughter Claire (a fragile, sympathetic Shannon Hoag), a piano prodigy whose dreams were thwarted by their oppressive father. A pall hangs over the house where stoic oldest daughter Judith (Anita B. Deely, in a role she knows well) cares for their ailing but still oppressive patriarch (Jack McCabe). A former judge "adept at stifling things," he continues to intimidate his children who cower from his rants, which they hear courtesy of a baby monitor. Also on hand is the enigmatic Uncle George (Jeff Bruce), a recovering alcoholic who never speaks, and Willie (Kyle Hamman), a local handyman who helps maintain the estate.

Joining them are the remote, alcoholic Alice (Jennifer Avery, an actress of great subtlety) and her husband Eamon (Michael Dailey, astutely balancing remorse, envy and bitterness), the grandson of the family's maid. Last but not least, there is sweet, simple Casimir (the terrific John Henry Roberts in a performance of wide-eyed innocence and nervous energy). The only son and primary storyteller, Casimir shares with Tom (Tom Hickey), an American academic researching Ireland's Roman Catholic upper class, the "phony fictions" -- to which the O'Donnell legacy has been reduced -- that he himself desperately needs to believe. But as in Chekhov, the happy ending remains out of reach.