There is a moment about halfway through Will Eno’s new play, The Open House, when you want to get up and slam the door behind you. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone can be so deliberately mean as the play’s main character: a withered father in a wheelchair who insults and puts down incessantly his wife, his brother and his adult children, on his wedding anniversary, no less. Luckily, his family feels exactly the same and finds any pretext to beat a hasty retreat. Slam! From that point on, everything changes in this ironic family drama, and while things don’t exactly start to look up, they at least move in a different, and unexpected, direction.

In fact, the play takes a 180 degree turn, so that it seems as if The Open House contained two separate one-acts. But the parts of this whole are meant to be as firmly stuck together as the members of a co-dependent family. As it happens, the one we meet on stage is a particularly harsh example. Between the bitterly impotent father and the forgotten and resentful mother, their emotionally stymied son and eager to please daughter, it’s hard to know who is worse off, if not their utterly ineffectual uncle/brother-in-law. Why they stay together is clear, however: you only have one family and you can’t choose it, the saying goes. But why couldn’t things be different?

That’s the million dollar question Eno asks, as perhaps anyone in a similarly confounding situation might, but his answer, which involves spiriting away these unhappy people and replacing them with much “better” versions, is an absurdist response and a bit puzzling.

The open house of the title refers to a real estate showing. A perky realtor arrives, played by Hannah Bos, whom we have just seen leave the stage as the helpless daughter, sent out for sandwiches. The realtor is a whole different kind of person, however, in dress and demeanor, and in her confident, although not entirely skilled hands, the set (Angje Ellermann’s outdated, overstuffed interior, which gives a closely cropped view on a disillusioned suburbia) comes to life with sun streaming through the windows, glossy travel magazines on the coffee table and “lots of potential.” She is followed in turn by a handyman, a buyer, his wife and finally their lawyer, “played” it would seem, by the son, the uncle, the wife and the husband, who exit and reappear as their own more dynamic doppelgängers. Their swift appearance on the scene and bustling drive to take over the house contrasts sharply with the stultified family gathering we have just witnessed. Moreover, it becomes clear with each successive arrival that these new characters, who are resolutely honest with their emotions and genuinely at ease with who they are, embody more fulfilled versions of the family members they have replaced. Even the family’s dog, who has fled like the others in the first half, now comes running when called and turns out to be an alert, adorable Akita.

Happy ending? Not quite. While our tendency might be to cheer this sudden reversal of fortunes, the change is only cosmetic, conveying no more substance than a quickly slapped on coat of paint. If we could zap away our families, would we? And what would that accomplish? The five member cast works competently with the material Eno supplies but Oliver Butler’s matter-of-fact direction doesn’t bring the characters off the page, whether in their blistered and peeling first versions or their sunny and spiritual second ones. As the causticly toxic father, Peter Friedman never warms completely to the broadly drawn caricature while the other male figures (Michael Countryman and Danny McCarthy, respectively) remain outlines we don’t ever quite grasp. Hannah Bos as the daughter/realtor and Carolyn McCormick as both wives, have more nuanced roles that carry the thin emotional core of this tight-lipped comedy.

The Open House throws wide the doors to change but tosses out the baby with the bathwater, as well. The new residents might be more in touch with themselves but they are not more worthy of attention for being “happier.” After all, if happiness was a measure of great theater, we’d have to also throw out all of Beckett (to whom Eno has been compared), much of Shakespeare (Hamlet, who?), and all of Greek tragedy, for starters. Though we can enjoy Eno’s little fantasy, like revenge, it’s a dish best served cold.