EVERETT BEEKIN

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, 150 W. 65th St. Through Jan. 6. Call Telecharge (212) 239-6200.

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A play about family and memory is a rich tradition in American theater. But Richard Greenberg’s “Everett Beekin” is so confused it never makes up its mind.

It opens in the late 1940s in the Lower East Side kitchen of Ma, a ferocious Jewish matriarch.

Ma’s daughters, Sophie and Anna, pay her a weekly dinner visit.

Also showing up is Jimmy Constant, the WASPy, California-bound fiance of a virtually unseen third daughter, Miri.

Flash forward to a California of the 1990s.

Anna’s older daughter, Celia, has come from Long Island to attend the wedding of her sister Nell’s daughter.

Nell – played by Bebe Neuwirth – is having an affair with the pharmaceuticals tycoon who is about to become her daughter’s father-in-law.

Jimmy Constant became for a bit the partner of the tycoon, who is called Everett Beekin and for no particular reason gives his name to the play.

It all ends with people gazing at the ocean.

What does it all mean? It’s a pointless assembly of Lower East Side cliches, topped off by California cliches. Greenberg needs a few more rewrites.

Evan Yionoulis’ direction flounders.

The main force of cohesion is the acid intelligence of Robin Bartlett as, first, Sophie and then as California-loathing Celia; she brings the cliches to amusing life.

Neuwirth is fine as Anna and as the shallow Californian Nell.

Kevin Isola makes a hopeful young Jimmy Constant and then a spectacularly dopey hippie.