When actor Carolyn Pool first takes the stage as a corpse-robber named Mac at the Illusion Theater, she resembles someone who has taken etiquette lessons from a swashbuckler, a pickpocket and Liberace. She charges downstage, then stops. She moves as if casing the joint, a funeral parlor. Her feral edge is at odds with her black mourning dress and the shiny rings she wears on most of her fingers.

We learn quickly that Mac is a Bonnie of the funeral circuit without her Clyde. But she is not always after the jewelry that she pries from the dead hands of bodies she has chosen by reading obituaries in the Los Angeles Times.

Sometimes Mac just wants closure, as when she goes to the viewing of her rich, insincere grandmother, who looks like Stalin in her coffin. The encounter at the casket between Mac and her grandmother leaves her emotionally bereft and us heartbroken.

Pool's engaging performance is at the center of Jeffrey Hatcher's "Three Viewings," three monologues set at funeral homes (simply suggested by Dean Holzman's stately set and Michael Wangen's evocative lighting). Pool's monologue, "The Thief of Tears," is sandwiched between veterans who acquit themselves admirably in the production that opened Friday, directed by Michael Robins.

James Cada plays Emil, an undertaker in love with a woman who does not know the depth of his affection. He has been repeating "I love you" out loud in anticipation of saying the words to her. His attention is unrequited. This monologue, "Tell-Tale," takes a tragic turn. Cada sells it with dignity and understatement.

Barbara Kingsley plays petite, spry widow Virginia in the monologue entitled "Thirteen Things About Ed Carpolaotti." At the death of her husband, Virginia is at first set upon by a host of people, including a mobster, who think she is an easy mark. But things turn around. Kingsley gently, sweetly lets us into the soul of her character, one that she originated when "Viewings" was developed in 1994 at the Illusion.

The work was Hatcher's breakout play. It is suffused with his erudite wit. (I love the references to Charlie Rose and to New Yorker cartoonist Al Hirschfeld.)

For all its many charms, the production, simply and elegantly staged by Robins, feels like it belongs to another century. There is not much action to speak of -- perhaps that's why Pool's performance is the most vivid and winning. The actors who take the stage in turn to tell us their stories are engaging raconteurs. They must be, for us to fall into their tales.

But as I sat at the Illusion, sometimes smiling, I wondered if I would have derived as much pleasure from simply reading the lines on the page. After all, this elementary storytelling offers such a marked contrast to the snap and flash offered by many theaters trying to compete with TV, movies and the Internet. That contrast was one of the things that helped "Viewings" to capture my attention.