Buntport’s “Electra Onion Eater” is smart, tight and witty, easily within the reach of people who’ve never studied Sophocles’ “Electra” and enormously rewarding for anyone who tackled classic Greek tragedies in college.

All the action takes place on a stage implicitly divided into a side yard, a kitchen and a middle-class living room. Electra (Erin Rollman) stands at the kitchen sink, chopping onions and weeping as she contemplates her miserable family situation.

The play begins after her mother, Clytemnestra (Hannah Duggan), has murdered her father, Agamemnon (Brian Colonna, offstage), who in turn has dispatched Electra’s sister.

As she waits for her brother Orestes (Erik Edborg) to return home, Electra (wearing an apron announcing “I’m a Good Helper”) dreams of murdering her mother as she makes onion pies as offerings to the gods. Viciously chopping onions, she weeps tears provoked both by her losses and the volatile sulfur compound that her knife releases.

“As with cutting onions, there is more than one way to end a man’s life,” Electra observes with weepy optimism.

In their separate rooms, she and her mother are absorbed by soap operas, occasionally exchanging a few words with their unctuous, platitude-spouting neighbor Bruce (Andrew Horowitz). After one of his particularly egregious generalizations, Electra snaps, “THEY do not say that, Bruce! YOU say it!”

Tension is fraught between Electra and her smug mom. Electra glares daggers at Clytemnestra, who smirks back.

“Do you smell something?” she asks her daughter, and sniffs Electra’s shoulder.

“I do! It’s … party poop!”

Electra seethes, barely reining her homicidal instincts while she awaits Orestes. But a rumor of Orestes’ death sends Electra into despair underscored by her mother’s complacent reaction.

“I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a mixed blessing,” Clytemnestra says cheerily, swilling another drink.

Anyone who paid attention during World Lit knows that things will not end well for Clytemnestra. Buntport’s reimagining of the story is acutely funny. A cremated cat is involved along with a terminally bad hair day and a dream about a giant killer tree.

“Electra Onion Eater” may be Buntport’s most brilliant revision since its seminal and hilarious “Titus Andronicus! The Musical!” It’s a shame the run ends this weekend because so many Great Courses students would absolutely love it.

-Claire Martin, November 22, 2013, Denver Post