When your many long years are drawing to an end, what made it worthwhile? What would want others to know about your life?

These questions may be existential, but they cut to the core of who we are. And while they're never spoken aloud, they form the thoughtful core of the otherwise thoroughly amusing new stage production from local attorney Lawrence Fox.

"The Obituary I'm Dying to Write" follows a group of elderly county home residents relaying anecdotes from their lives as they compose their own amusing and touching obituaries, and it ran for six days at the Shawnee Playhouse in the Poconos in early February.

Silly and sometimes crude, "Obituary" remains an adult experience. Fox included events from the lives of people he's worked with in his decades-long legal career in the two-act show, and the surrealness of satire is firmly rooted in the ordinary.

Common events that we face - yet loath - are brushed with the caustic agent of experience to distort the banal into the extraordinary. A multiple-choice test's strange options could destroy a career; the military is a victim of its own red tape; and even God can't prevent a tax audit.

The characters each focus on one memory as the most meaningful to who they are, and as each begins his or her tale they turn from their friends and address the audience while subtly altering their costumes, becoming their younger self. It's a simple and satisfying illusion that affects a true flashback without being a distraction.

Additionally, the simplicity of the set design – a few stationary tables – helped minimize movement, while a screen at the rear of the stage was occasionally used to display amusing images relevant to the scene. Neither of these worked perfectly, as the minuscule stage at Shawnee required some actors, serving as wait staff, to obstruct the view of others for long moments, and screen images sometimes drew the eye away from speakers, but these were heartbeat-long disruptions easily missed.

The directors also used a bizarre mix of music to mark sporadic interludes – from AC/DC to the Jackson Five; Peter, Bjorn and John to They Might Be Giants to the Talking Heads. At each chapter I found myself eager to "name that song." While I loved the choices, they seemed more self-referential to the individual scene than to cement the scenes together thematically, which was maybe a missed opportunity.

The performers were all "locals" with varying degrees of experience on stage, and while I wouldn't describe their work here as groundbreaking, I wouldn't call any of them bad.

Aaaron Pappalardo didn't seem to click with his God-fearing Milton until deep into his monologue, while Elizabeth Guarnieri, portraying retired lawyer Lillian, was maybe given too much intricate court-drama dialogue to appear comfortable in her own skin.

Eileen Cohen was irrepressibly bubbly as raunchy former teacher Gertie and Edward Joseph, as Artie, evinced both a quiet dignity as an old man and a desperate confusion as his younger self, but was always understated as a man who didn't like to rock the boat.

The play's greatest weakness, and the reason I don't describe more of the actors, is there are still so many of them.

This two-hour play featured 12 performers in 20 roles, and eight of them equally qualify as protagonists. Each major character is given its share of the spotlight, and while that's nice for the actors, it's a bit exhausting for the audience. There's no break and no B-plot and nobody to really scrutinize – everything everyone says is of equal importance.

It's easy enough to keep up with the vignettes, but it does feel a bit like studying for a test or a memory exercise.

That, combined with a jarring tonal change entering the second act, threatened to throw me out of the moment, though the comedy kept me from completely leaving the characters' world. This is lucky, because emotions and stories begin to intertwine late in the show, but after hearing all the tales I lost track of unsolved questions – and I was the only person in the theater taking notes.

If you can remember all the details, however, the characters' second go-around, in which they read the final draft of their obituary and at what age they died, is wholly satisfying and not as melancholy as one might suspect.

Lillian the lawyer, who really should be the lead but is constrained by equality, suffered through the longest and most dramatic personal story, and is left nearly forgotten at the end. Fox didn't forget her, of course, as she's essentially his proxy in the story, and she has a breathtaking last-second revelation that nearly left me in tears.

"The Obituary I'm Dying to Write" may have a few too many personalities sharing too little time, but it's a clever riot of humanity and it's clear in the end that each character is bowing out with joy in their hearts. And that sounds like a great way to go.