Let’s face it, families are a pain. Or, at least, families are more likely to cause pain than other relationships … especially Jewish families in Brooklyn (or so plays, films and novels would have us believe). The expectations, the inevitable comparisons with everybody else, the jealousy – you get the picture.

Donald Margulies’ Brooklyn Boy, at San Diego Repertory Theatre through March 4, gives us an illustration of one such family. Todd Salovey directs.

Novelist Eric Weiss (James Newcomb) takes time from his book tour to visit dying father Manny (Robert Levine) in the hospital. The shoe salesman may have lost some dignity lying there in that silly hospital gown, but he hasn’t lost his marbles or his caustic tongue. When Eric announces that his new book will be No. 11 on the bestseller list next week, does Manny congratulate him? No. “They have a number 11?” he asks.

The conversation continues in this vein, Eric’s dedication (“For my mother and father”) meeting with “Where’s our names? Could be anybody’s parents” and ends with Manny’s ultimate failure to give his son the approval he so desperately wants.

Eric’s dad isn’t the only moribund person in his life. His wife Nina (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) has asked for a divorce, presumably because of professional jealousy. Nina is a failed writer – at least so far – and doesn’t seem able or willing to deal (or live) with Eric’s success.

Then there’s Eric’s childhood buddy Ira (Matthew Henerson) whom he bumps into at the hospital (Ira’s there visiting his mother). Unlike the ambitious Eric, Ira has taken the road more traveled by and stayed home, taking over the family deli, marrying and raising four kids. Ira may not have Eric’s life in the arts, but he has the peace of mind Eric lacks. He also thinks Eric ought to become an observant Jew.

Eric gets into much faster company when his book is optioned and he goes to Los Angeles to write the screenplay. You can guess where that will end up when you meet actor Tyler Shaw (Andrew Kennedy), who offers his work method: “I always find my characters through my hair. Always. It’s like once I get the right hair, I become them.”

Meanwhile, in one of the play’s better scenes, a much younger woman named Alison (Christy Yael) sets her sights on sleeping with this newly important novelist. Alison has written her own screenplay because, she asserts, “fiction is so over. Kids my age don’t read.”

And there’s the inevitable meeting with film producer Melanie Fine (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) who wants the script “tweaked” (surprise!).

Every child of a crazy-making father like Manny knows that loving him is not sufficient; there is no way to be good enough for him. Levine makes this fact abundantly clear.

Consequently, Newcomb’s Eric is a doer, ambitious and driven, hoping that success will make Manny love him. Yet he, too, pushes away the person who is not running from him.

Van Valkenburgh does terrific double duty as almost ex-wife Nina and fast-talking, hard-charging film producer Melanie. Henerson is perfect and perfectly annoying as Ira; Yael a delightful Alison and Kennedy a typical empty-headed pretty-boy actor.

Brooklyn Boy is an OK play, but OK is disappointing from the man who gave us the wonderful Collected Stories. There’s nothing bad or even untrue about these Brooklynites, it’s just that we’ve seen these stock characters so many times before and Margulies offers no new or original insights. Maybe that’s the point, but it makes for ho-hum theater.

Brooklyn Boy plays through March 4 in the Lyceum Space of the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1000 or visit www.sandiegorep.com.

What is it about human nature that makes it so stressful on two people – be they friends, lovers or spouses – when one is demonstrably more successful than the other?

Writer Ben (Gideon Banner) and playwright David (Sean Dugan) – buddies since music camp back in those glorious pre-work high school days when they both wanted to be rock stars – meet at a restaurant to celebrate Ben’s first novel contract in the world premiere of Itamar Moses’ The Four of Us. The Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage hosts the play through March 11, with Pam MacKinnon directing.

From this dinner, Moses takes us on a fascinating My Dinner with André style verbal seesaw ride through the lives and psyches of Ben and David. So why the title The Four of Us? Moses says he likes ambiguous titles (consider another Moses effort, Bach at Leipzig, which is not about Bach and in which the composer barely appears).

Moving back and forth in time and place (wonderfully accomplished by the presence of two stagehands below the raised playing space who nimbly leap to the job when required and then retire to their foxholes), Ben and David philosophize about life in the arts – specifically writing, with its attendant difficulties of finding a publisher/theater, hoping for success and figuring out how to make enough money to pay the rent in the meantime.

Ben’s wild success and David’s lack of it cause the usual frictions, but Moses chooses not to probe the question much beneath the surface. He keeps it light, regressing to amusing scenes like that long-ago Prague summer when sex, drugs and time for writing were easy to come by.

The structure of this play is as interesting as the content. Parallel scenes happen contemporaneously: Ben speaks to a book tour audience while David leaves a message on Ben’s phone – a technique that works wonderfully in the Carter space. Time, place and topics are twisted in, on and around each other until the audience begins to wonder whether this is a play or is about a play, and who may or may not be in it.

Banner and Dugan are just right for these parts, bringing youthful vigor and unabashed, believable guy-ness to the characters. Banner’s Ben is the more centered (perhaps money has that effect); Dugan’s David more restless, still questing, trying, hoping for the success that his friend has already achieved.

The Four of Us is intriguing theater. Here’s to more Moses scripts on the Globe stage.

The Four of Us plays through March 11 at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

Those silly twits Adam and Eve didn’t just ruin it for themselves with that dopey apple trick, but for eight other people who were in that garden with them.

The story about those second stringers who didn’t make the scriptural cut into the Bible is onstage through Feb. 25 at SDSU’s Experimental Theatre in David W. Hahn’s In the Beginning, with music and lyrics by Tony winner Maury Yeston (Titanic). Rick Simas directs.

The Big Guy himself (Brandon Joel Maier) narrates, illustrating the story with rear projections from Biblical screen epics and annoying old grammar grouches like me with overuse of incorrect early English (“Let us talketh about life”).

Romer (Andrew Smith), Avi (Steve Limones), Arielle (Maeve Martin), Ben (Daniel Hirsch) and four other members of the tribe spend the show inventing shopping (“For the good of mankind, BUY!”), figuring out what to name things like wheels and wandering from place to place, enduring flood, drought and slavery in Egypt before they head off again toward the Promised Land.

In the Beginning is a mixed bag. The main minus is a frequently sophomoric script with too little wit and too much “ething.” The major pluses are Yeston’s spotty but pleasant score, Jeannie Galioto’s costumes, lively choreography by Alison Bretches and generally good performances (though several could project better). Comic relief is hilariously provided by Joseph Almohaya as the gay Pharaoh and David Armstrong as his lackey.

In the Beginning plays through Feb. 25 at SDSU’s Experimental Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 594-6884 or visit theatre.sdsu.edu.