A family affair in close quarters

The wry premise of “The Norman Conquests’’ is that all three plays are set in the same country house on the same July weekend. “Table Manners’’ takes place in the dining room, “Living Together’’ in the living room, and “Round and Round the Garden’’ in the garden, so they fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Reg and Ruth have come to visit their sister Annie and their ailing mother, who’s confined to her room upstairs. Reg is accompanied by his wife, Sarah, and Ruth by her husband, Norman; the sixth and last member of the cast is Annie’s longtime sort-of boyfriend, veterinarian Tom.

It’s not a happy reunion, since no one really wants to see mother, whose sour presence permeates the goings-on below. Reg is obsessed with his latest board-game creation, “Monopolice!,’’ in whose complicated rules he takes refuge from his marriage. Sarah is such a bossyboots, you’d think she was the family member and Reg the in-law. Annie is stuck giving mom endless pills and stuck in her relationship with the one-dimensional Tom, whose answer to every question seems to be “Umm.’’ She was planning a romantic getaway to East Grinstead this weekend — not with Tom, but with Norman, who escapes from reality via borrowed women rather than board games. Sarah, however, has wormed the truth out of Annie, and now Ruth also knows. Little wonder Norman is swigging the family’s potent homemade dandelion wine as if it were apple cider.

Jenna McFarland Lord’s living-room set features walls overstuffed with reproductions (not all hanging straight), a motley collection of knockoff rugs (including a fake bearskin), furniture out of a jumble sale (and no cozy, anchoring sofa). The place looks cheap and depressing, and so does Lindsay Crouse’s Sarah when she enters in a tight, flowered frock. For a quarter of an hour, it seems the production could be heading for hard truths and edgy, uncomfortable Ayckbourn.