A disputed stamp collection leads five characters to act badly in the San Diego premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius, playing through Sunday, May 10, at Cygnet Rolando Theatre. Francis Gercke directs.

Here are the players: Jackie (Jessica John), whose mother has recently died and left the collection in her care, saying some of the stamps may be valuable.

Mary (Sandy Campbell), Jackie’s much older half sister, lives elsewhere, has returned for their mother’s funeral and wants the stamp collection, claiming it was her grandfather’s and therefore belongs to her.

Philip (Jack Missett), a stamp dealer, apparently very small time, who seems never to have seen, much less gotten his hands on a stamp (or anything else) worth a lot of money. He doesn’t actually seem to want the stamps, but an appraiser’s fee.

Sterling (Manny Fernandes) is a high-stakes player, bald and scary-looking, whose gambit is to buy cheap and sell dear.

Dennis (John DeCarlo), fuzzy of function, but seems to be a “finder” or just a flunky for Sterling. Dennis is the first to see the stamps in question.

Once it’s established that almost everybody wants these stamps, Rebeck’s conceit is to combine the characters in various ways to watch the con attempts pile up and the fur fly. It’s a terrific juggling act demanding split-second timing, and Gercke has gotten that – and terrific performances – out of this fine cast.

Missett has never been better as small-time loser Philip. It’s good to see him in something besides an amusing geezer role. DeCarlo’s go-between Dennis turns on the fake charm (and runs for cover) with the best of them.

Campbell’s vixenish Mary is the most enigmatic, her ’30s wardrobe a stark contrast to Jackie’s sneakered casual attire. John makes a convincing switch from innocent to player when she realizes what’s at stake.

Fernandes continues to demonstrate his versatility with this frightening portrayal of big, bad, bald Sterling.

Special kudos to Sean Fanning, for his extremely clever set design in which a bookcase and a filing cabinet of Philip’s office open out to Jackie’s large window with greenery in view.

Mauritius could use a bit more clarity about the characters: What are the three male characters to each other? Why is the difficult past to which the women keep referring important (and what was difficult about it)? Why is Mary dressed in ’30s garb while the others are in present time?

They say stamp collectors are often a bit obsessive. Rebeck tells us those who want to profit from those little gummed squares can be even more driven.

Mauritius plays through Sunday, May 10, at Cygnet Rolando Theatre. Shows Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, call 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com.

Playwright Richard Greenberg puts a twist on Hollywood’s increasing obsession with old geezers in the world premiere of Our Mother’s Brief Affair. His geezer is female, the moribund Jewish mother Anna (Jenny O’Hara), who dominates the stage and her adult twins Seth (Arye Gross) and Abby (Marin Hinkle) with unwanted opinions and lightning-swift mood changes. Pam MacKinnon directs the play, which runs through May 3 at South Coast Repertory Theatre.

Anna has made a bit of a cottage industry out of dying, but it seems to be for real this time, and Abby has flown in from the west coast to be with mom, leaving her lesbian lover and young daughter.

Seth, an obituary writer and also out of the closet, is quick with one-liners but less successful with his social life. Anna, with characteristic subtlety, asks, “If you’re not gonna sleep with anyone anyway, would it kill you to not sleep with a woman?”

Anna was introduced in Greenberg’s 2000 play Everett Beekin, married young to escape her mother and raised the twins in a “starter home” in Levittown. The marriage was not a happy one, inspiring the slight premise of this play – the titular affair, accomplished in 10 weeks of clandestine afternoon meetings while 15-year-old Seth was at Juilliard for viola lessons.

The play flips back and forth between the affair in 1973 and the present. Matthew Arkin plays both husband Abe and lover Phil, but this is O’Hara’s show: she alternates between coquette and bitch, mom and invalid, riveting in any incarnation.

Seth and Abby spend rather too much time arguing about who knew what and when about their parents’ lives. There is a great deal of Greenberg’s signature über-clever banter here. Abby says of their father, “I was his favorite. That’s like being given the ethics medal by Benito Mussolini.” And Seth describes his mother’s voice as “Flatbush on the Thames.”

But though the verbal pyrotechnics are amusing, somehow none of that seems to matter. Greenberg wants to tell us about Anna, but seems to have run out of material too early and tossed in the stock Greenberg characters Abby and Seth to fill time. Then he lets Anna drop a bomb about the identity of the mystery lover that left me, for one, scratching my head and wondering why.

Our Mother’s Brief Affair leaves us with a collection of clever one-liners strung together by a paper-thin plot, the whole held together better than Greenberg deserves by this sterling cast.

Our Mother’s Brief Affair plays through May 3, at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa. Shows run Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call 714-708-5555 or visit www.scr.org.

As a photo is made by reflected light bouncing off the subject, playwright Ronald McCants uses photography to shine a light into the dark corners of behavior in Refraction, one of four plays in the Baldwin New Play Festival at UCSD. Refraction plays through April 24, directed by Jeffrey Wienckowski.

Refraction gives us Nat (Kyle Anderson), favored oldest son of an African American family, a college graduate with a nice white-collar job as youth counselor in the juvenile justice system. Nat likes photography and has covered his office walls with photos he’s taken – mostly landscapes and cityscapes.

In a long first scene, Nat tries to help Rico (Hugo Medina), a 17-year-old convicted killer who continues to deny both guilt and the homosexual feelings that led to the murder. Rico relates that he also had a camera as a boy, but that his abusive father broke it.

Rico isn’t the only one with secrets. When Nat’s younger brother Paul (Bowman Wright) gets Nat to agree to try to patch up the estrangement between him and wife Erica (Marshel Adams), dark family secrets about both Paul and Nat come out.

Adams is terrific as the take-charge Erica who does not suffer fools (or bad behavior) gladly. Anderson cuts a fine figure as Nat. Wright and Medina are convincing, but some of their lines were not clear when I saw the play.

McCants’ point seems to be that looks are often deceiving and most if not all of us have been wounded in some way by life. True, but in its present form Refraction suffers from too-much-itis: Rico is really a detour from the family story being told. The parallel construction only serves to muddy what might have been made clearer with concentration on one family story.

Refraction plays through Friday, April 24, at the Mandell Weiss Forum Studio as part of the Baldwin New Play Festival. Last show Friday, April 24, at 8 p.m. For tickets call 858-534-4574 or visit www.theatre.ucsd.edu/season/newplayfest/