Edward Carr, new to being a widower, has always been a driven man.

Raised in a series of foster homes, he forged a solid family. When he found his dream woman, he made her his own, even though she was 15 years older and inconveniently married to his boss. Science and statistics be damned, he revels in the pleasure he gets from the cigarettes he smokes during every waking hour.

You can't help sensing that there's something a little off about Carr, a man both grieving and defiant. And that's exactly the unsettling apprehension Neil LaBute wants audiences to feel as they watch Wrecks, his 75-minute puzzle of a play.

Wrecks has just opened at Plantation's Mosaic Theatre, with the ever-artful Gordon McConnell playing Carr and a whole host of creative ideas swirling around him.

Strictly a solo show when Ed Harris starred in the play's 2005 premiere in Ireland, Wrecks has been augmented by Mosaic director Richard Jay Simon with a number of silent mourners, though their frequent movement distracts from LaBute's words. Designer Sean McClelland has created another awe-inspiring set in Mosaic's small space, with the ''family members'' visible in an anteroom and the casket containing Carr's late wife, Mary Jo, resting in a majestic, classically inspired gray marble chapel. These embellishments, however, ultimately don't obscure the fact that LaBute's slender monologue isn't much more than the carefully crafted setup for another aren't-men-awful payoff.

We won't reveal that shocking end-of-play surprise, although if you're an astute LaBute aficionado or into Greek tragedy, you'll see it coming. McConnell's Carr plants clue after clue, until the ugly secret that he spills seems inevitable.

The man who is sharing the minutiae of his 30 joyous years with Mary Jo, between drags on five cigarettes (yes, you will count them as McConnell befouls the air), isn't actually Carr at all. The conceit is that Carr is receiving condolences in that anteroom and we're listening to his most secret thoughts.

What becomes clear is that, for a man who claims to have experienced so much spiritual and physical happiness with his wife, Carr is seething with rage. He resents his mother-in-law, Mary Jo's ex-husband, her sons from that marriage. He is devastated that cancer killed her, although not subjecting her to three decades of secondhand smoke might have helped. He engenders a smattering of sympathy and a few laughs, but Carr ultimately proves frighteningly willful.

McConnell, who is such a fine actor that he seems to be making Carr's words up as he goes along, conveys all of the character's emotional shadings and contradictions. But sitting in a smoke-filled room just to recoil at LaBute's gimmicky payoff? Not such fun.

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