A quick glance at the stage provides the basic road map for the journey through "Well," the intense comic drama playing at the Phoenix Theatre.

In one corner, two institutional beds occupy a room so antiseptic that it couldn't be anything but a hospital ward, and it is -- specifically, an allergy unit. In the other corner sits a recliner, within easy reach of shelves that contain key props from the occupant's past or present.

Most of the action shifts between these two worlds in the confrontational, autobiographical, domestic drama that playwright Lisa Kron describes as a theatrical "construct" or "exploration" about how people do or don't recover from illness.

On several occasions, the protagonist, a late-40ish New York playwright called Lisa, portrayed at the Phoenix by Deborah Sargent, insists that the play is not about her and her mother, Ann, depicted by Gayle Steigerwald. But the longer the show goes on, the more it seems as if Lisa protests too much.

At the very least, the piece seems an homage to -- if not a therapeutic rant about -- Ann, a sick, lethargic shadow of her former self, namely the force who helped preserve the integrity of a Lansing, Mich., neighborhood as it was integrated during the 1960s. Certainly, "Well" is also a testament to the lessons Lisa learned, and maybe continues to learn, from Ann.

If the viewer at the Phoenix can step back and think about the meaning behind the sometimes overly intense scenes of Lisa's recovery from the allergy ward, or the family's conflicts in Lansing, the play might convey a broader sense of lessons we all learn from our parents. Whether we ultimately believe the play is about broader issues or not, it has the feel of a domestic drama in this production, which is directed by Martha Jacobs with the sense of one big, slow-burning crescendo.

It helps that Sargent and Steigerwald have played relatives in many productions at the Phoenix. Their onstage relationship -- as an introspective, controlling, short-fused daughter and a patient, but tough mother -- projects intimacy and trust, and a knowledge of how far one can push the other.

At the end of the play, Lisa is forced to confront her demons about her mother, mainly because of a letter by Ann that pertains to the integration of their neighborhood but has parallel applications to her relationship with her daughter.

In the letter, as with her long series of revisionist interruptions to the play, Ann insists that we shouldn't leave the rough parts of life out of the story. Maybe she means that those are the lessons we can learn from most.