This play, author Lisa Kron says, is not about my mother.

Well. Let's see. Even as the playwright walks onto the stage, the audience has already met the sleeping form of her mother, who is snoring in an easy chair, her body covered in an afghan and her feet snuggled in puffy pink house-shoes. The actress playing the playwright tries to explain: this play is not about my mother and me; it is an exploration of certain themes, a place for discussion about why some people get sick and stay sick, and some people get well. It's also a place to explore the achievements of the playwright's mother, who moved her Jewish, white family into a black neighborhood in the midwest, and started a neighborhood association designed to bring the community together.

This is not a "white woman saves the mixed neighborhood play." Nor is it a traditional play, exactly, as the actors move seamlessly from acting the scenes to talking to Ann Kron, the mother, about her life. In several scenes, the supporting actors even discuss the play itself, as does Ann, and as does Lisa. The action takes place in the allergy unit of a fancy hospital, and in the living-room of Ann Kron, who is fatigued beyond measure, but able to bring energy to everything involving the neighborhood association, or her daughter's acting friends, or a story about her daughter's childhood. "Her energy level has two settings: all, or nothing," muses Lisa.

Lisa battles with her mother in subtle ways. Why, she wonders, did she feel vulnerable to allergies as well, and then recover, when her mother never did? Why? Easy: because she chose health, by God. But by the end of the play, this concept of choice is beginning to appear pretty flimsy, especially as the play raising provocative questions about the health of the environment and the potential damage of chemicals like formaldehyde (which is apparently quite prevalent in malls).

Lisa journeys to an allergy specialist unit, and witnesses extraordinary things: after a six-day detoxing fast, one arthritic woman watches her withered fingers unfurl, and an autistic child stops showing signs of autism after detoxing, and then shows them again after sampling some foods.

Lisa explores her growing-up - through the tender, approving encouragement of her mother - we see flashbacks of integration as told from the point of view of a young white girl who was teased for not knowing Stevie Wonder, or Chaka Khan. In these scenes, Terra Joy Jones plays an able, big-voiced school bully who is still no match for Lisa's mother Ann. One wonders who could be. Ann is played with exquisite tenderness by Therese Diehans, whose work is as clear and dear as a Diane Weiss. April Wolfe moves ably from a sullen allergy patient to a young woman who finds herself falling in love with Ann's mothering.

Lisa's Kron's writing is a feast for the ears. She is a writer with an ear for wit, and a little grandiosity. And her characters move and travel, opening up to one epiphany after the next.

By the end of the play, it's clear to everyone on the set and perhaps in the audience that Lisa is judging her mother, and condemning her for her sickness. It's also clear that Ann Kron is a researching dynamo, who gives sympathy and compassion to people in sickness and in distress, whether well or allergic. She is always, Lisa says, "the best place to be." The supporting cast gradually falls in love Ann, even as Lisa feels blocked from her.

Well is a fascinating work. It's rare to find such an unusual format for a play. As Lisa, the athletic and lovely Kate Witt glides from interior monologue to montage to navigating her way through a single scene which might involve a flashback, a present viewing by Ann and the supporting cast and then a confrontation from the supporting cast, or a crossover where Ann leaves her chair and goes up to offer the supporting cast a drink, or the audience a bag of chips - thrown with dexterity with the help of her "grabber."

Through it all, Lisa is struggling to frame her past and her mother's illness and to be free of the judgment she gives two women she clearly loves (that would be both her mother and herself). She assumes as the playwright a command of her cast, only to find that they are judging the play and prefer real life to art.

Well is well lit and well cast, with a funny way of providing all the good scenery to the home living-room where Ann lies nearly motionless in her easy chair.

Writer Susan Sontag talked about the moral judgment the well give to the sick, and several characters in Well explore the same territory. It's interesting to note how Ann's acceptance of her illness gives her a peaceful way of being and helpful energy to spare, while Lisa's so-called "wellness" generates a jagged, fluttery and frustrated presence for her.

There is nothing easily solved in Well, but the dynamic close is well worth any building confusion. The ending brought tears to my eyes for its extraordinary thoughts about integration - both within the body and throughout the world, particularly as we'd just inaugurated President Obama the day before.

"Well" at ArtsWest through February 15, 4711 California Ave. S.W. Box office: 938-0339. www.artswest.org.