A handy tip: If you are a character in a play and you are invited to a get-together, don't go. Don't go to dinner parties. Don't go to cocktail parties, reunions, anniversaries or showers. A costume party? Absolutely not. And if a Dublin woman recovering from a suicide attempt throws an inexplicable shindig to celebrate the completion of her new kitchen extension, RSVP no.

That absurd soiree activates Isobel Mahon's ''Party Face,'' an unlikely comedy at City Center Stage II that recently toured Ireland under its original title, ''Boom?'' Before the evening is out, drinks will have been drunk, insults lobbed, upchuck hurled and a topiary sculpture annihilated. Thanks for coming. Don't let the canapes hit you on the...