Open Stage Theatre closes out David Maslow's first season as artistic director with John Guare's "The Sacredness of the Next Task," the second of the "Lydie Breeze" plays. The first, "Bulfinch's Mythology," opened last week; the plays run on an alternating schedule and on certain dates are performed with a break between.

"The Sacredness of the Next Task" is by far the stronger of the pair. It ties up many of the questions left open in "Bulfinch's Mythology." Both center on Lydie Breeze and the utopian community she establishes on Nantucket with three Civil War veterans. "Sacredness" begins after she has died, leaving husband Joshua and children Gussie and Lydie to come to terms with her turbulent life and unexpected death.

Like "Mythology," there's a lot of melodrama that sometimes overshadows the characters. Honest emotion is swallowed by dizzying turmoil. Still, the broken lives and hearts left in Lydie Breeze's wake are interesting, and it's hard not to hear echoes of Ibsen's "Ghosts," as the parents' mistakes keep rearing their ugly heads.

Maslow, who directs both plays, wholeheartedly commits to Guare's melodrama, and there is here, as in "Mythology," too much moaning and collapsing in despair. But "Sacredness" has its share of quiet and funny moments, and some scenes, like those between Joshua and his older daughter, are truly lovely.

I enjoyed Sam Turich's mature Joshua much more than his whiny younger version. Turich now gives Joshua a dose of plucky sarcasm mixed with a forlorn understanding that makes him both droll and touching.

Laura Lee Brautigam brings a childlike innocence to young Lydie, named for her mother and caught up in the memories that seem to wash over the beach house like the ocean waves that serve as recurrent sound effects.

Sara Canter has the more interesting role of Gussie, a clear-eyed 20-year-old who has made up her mind about how much she'll sacrifice to escape her father's suffocating world. Canter is jaunty, sassy and, at times, devastatingly tragic in her depiction of Gussie's limited options. She offers insight into the complexity of Guare's reflections on the costs of freedom.

Others, such as Kelly Marie McKenna, as the nanny, Beaty, and Matt Lamb, as Jeremiah Grady, son of the man Joshua killed in "Bulfinch's Mythology," never get the opportunity to step out of the intense melodrama of the play, but that one-dimensionality is true to the production style. And Maslow's sand-covered set looks more like a lived-on beach now that it's had some use.

It certainly has been an interesting season at Open Stage, with the opportunity to see four plays that most Pittsburghers have never had the chance to see, all offering top-notch female roles.

The first, "The America Play," was the most compelling. But even when I felt a production didn't quite get to where it needed to go, I admired the thought-provoking selections. I look forward to Maslow's next season.