Rolling lawns, luscious tulips and a blue sky dotted with cotton ball clouds. Here we meet Miss Witherspoon, situated in a comic book paradise. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

Since Miss Witherspoon is a mordant comedy by the wonderful Christopher Durang, a lot can go wrong. Moments later, we're not surprised when Chicken Little arrives, announcing the sky is falling. And we're not surprised when it does.

OK, it's not actually the sky that falls. It is fragments of SkyLab. Not that it matters to Miss Witherspoon, who explains to us that she's already dead. She committed suicide sometime in the '90s, finding life a complete disappointment. SkyLab is only a metaphor for the world's ridiculous unfairness. Miss Witherspoon wasn't actually hit by a SkyLab shard, but it's the principle of the thing.

But the eternal powers that be (they include Saint Peter, as well as a pretty Indian spiritual guide named Maryamma) don't share Miss Witherspoon's principles. The clever conceit of Durang's play is that, as a kind of karmic penance, she is sent back for multiple reincarnations. At some point, the powers hope, Miss W's tweedy brown aura can be lightened.

So she is sent to earth again. And again. Reincarnated as a baby to adoring, yuppie parents, she deliberately pulls the plug — and later finds herself in appallingly trashy and cruel circumstances. Will she ever learn?

This terrain of struggle played out on a glittering tragic-comic edge is the stuff of Durang's past mastery. Miss Witherspoon reminds us of that mastery. It also reminds us, too often, of his past.

Miss Witherspoon is full of Durang's trademark dark jokes and jumbled pop culture references. A funny repeated one involves Rex Harrison. Miss Witherspoon believes she was married to him, though Maryamma patiently explains that she was only married to his soul in an earlier incarnation. It is pure delusion that Miss Witherspoon remembers being taken to the Oscars. But though the current show doesn't fail to entertain, Durang's faithful fans (I count myself one) will experience the twinge of remembering other plays — Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater especially — where his ideas were stronger and his material fresher.

The McCarter's sleek production — the world premiere — doesn't help because it constantly softens Miss Witherspoon's potentially sharp contours. The title role is played here by Kristine Nielsen, Durang's most recent muse, and a loud, funny lady. Directed here by Emily Mann, Nielsen turns in a performance of frenzied comic virtuosity — but there's little sense of the character's depression. Similarly, the rest of the accomplished cast is directed for humor rather than poignancy. We can have both, as Durang's best plays and productions have shown.

MISS WITHERSPOON Through Oct. 16, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787