Beginning to live in 'End Days'

It's the end of the world as they know it, but the Steins definitely don't feel fine.

Arthur, traumatized by a 9/11-style skyscraper collapse, is immobilized by guilt for surviving his employees. His wife, Sylvia, has become a Messianic Jew, convinced that Jesus Christ will save her. And their daughter, Rachel, shrouds herself in Goth garb hoping the world will leave her alone.

In a post 9/11-world depicted by Deborah Zoe Laufer's "End Days," each member of the Stein family accepts the certainty of the end, but from a different perspective. Arthur plays the fatalist: Why bother with daily routines when they're going to stop some day? Sylvia welcomes the end because the rapture is coming! Rachel gets high.

In his deft portrayal of Arthur, Bill Simmons makes a dramatic evolution from a catatonic state into the husband and father Arthur should have been all along. It's fascinating to watch Simmons peel away the after-effects of what Arthur went through: the lethargy, the detachment, the monotone, that stinky bathrobe.

Martha Jacobs faces the unenviable challenge of playing Sylvia, who, as a Jewish mother and zealous Christian convert, is a horribly unsympathetic character. In Act 1 on Thursday, Sylvia's voice was often shrill or creaky, and she was always getting in somebody's face. Was such an irritating portrayal a successful one? Maybe. Maybe the playwright or director insisted that Sylvia be over the top, to explain why the family constantly tries to calm her down. But in a space as small as Phoenix's Basile Theatre, Sylvia could be less intense.

As Rachel, Phebe Taylor makes a believably rebellious teenager who grows a little. The defiance, the punk look, the softening for her boyfriend (Nelson), the maturing when her parents need her -- it all works. As Nelson, who has suffered a trauma of his own, Matthew Van Oss can also get pretty keyed up, but offers welcome optimism and deadpan humor.

Matthew Roland flips back and forth with nearly equal brilliance between his portrayal of Jesus Christ, complete with beatific smile and quotes from Scripture, and British physicist Stephen Hawking, with rapier wit unfettered by his debilitating illness. Hawking, played with an American accent, seems to have found his way into the cast by virtue of his own endgame theory: that humans have no future if they don't explore space.

As the Steins recover, they embark on a silly, cross-cultural path that makes sense only to them, but it doesn't matter because they all discover another option: If death is certain, maybe everyone should live each day as if it's the last.