Runs through: May 22

Early in Lisa Loomer's paradoxically hilarious and tragic Living Out, you want to physically damage—or at least slap silly—Jennifer Avery. Well, not Avery herself, but Wallace Breyer, the smug, classist, racist and wholly insufferable new mother Avery plays.

Interviewing a Latina candidate to be her new baby's nanny, Avery takes the condescending tone of a kindergarten teacher while stabbing emphatic notes into a Blackberry like someone marking up a badly botched algebra exam.

'I understand different cultures have different concepts of time,' she says with a sweet, condescending smile. Even so, she stresses, her nanny better be punctual, even if they come from south of the border.

A co-production between Teatro Vista and the American Theater Company, Living Out is a winning effort that illuminates the chasm between two sets of parents living in Los Angeles.

On one side of the gulf are attorneys Nancy Robin ( Cheryl Graeff ) , and her husband Richard, liberal, white and well-off new parents. On the other side are Ana Hernandez ( Sandra Marquez ) and her husband Bobby ( Joe Minoso ) , illegal aliens and the parents of two children, one of whom they had to leave in El Salvador when they fled the war there.

Despite their best, multi-culti intentions and their insistence that Ana is 'part of the family,' the Robins are clueless and blinkered about the reality of their nanny—oops—'caregiver.'

'I love the east side,' says Richard referring to the marginal-to-dangerous neighborhood Ana lives in, 'It's so much more soulful.'

When Ana explains that she had to quit dentistry school 'because of the war,' there's a telling moment of heavy silence. In Nancy's world, 'torture' is something she does to her hair when she's trying to curl it.

Then there's the fact that Ana has excellent reasons for believing she can't tell Nancy that she has her own child to care for at home. Nancy may think she considers Ana part of the family. In reality, she'd never ask a blood relative to always give priority to a minimum-wage job minding somebody else's kid.

In Living Out the unintended ignorance ( but ignorance nonetheless ) the Robins' have of the Hernandez' world eventually leads to tragic results.

Yet thanks to Loomer's cutting humor and Cecilie Keenan's astute direction, Living Out is never heavy-handed. Nor does it play as a didactic guilt trip aimed at upper-class nanny employers.

'Why would I want to join a gang?' Bobby Hernandez explodes at one point, 'I just was in a war!'

It's that kind of wit—borne of acute perceptiveness—that makes Living Out both richly provocative and entertaining.

As Ana, Sandra Marquez is the sharp center of the production, a steely, intelligent beauty whose strength, compassion and inner turmoil are reflected in every aspect of her life. The entire supporting cast is deft, but as nannies commiserating with Ana, Tanya Saracho and Carmen Severino create indelible characters and together walk off with every scene they're in.