In the Clarence Brown Lab production of “Flu Season,” a man enters from the house, sets up his props, and the play begins.  His name is Prologue and, like the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” he sets the scene. Even as the lights go out, he speaks reassuringly that “we have nothing to fear from the dark.”

But wait! Another gentleman rises from his theater chair and claims stage right.  He’s the Epilogue, cynic and no-nonsense interpreter of the action.  Like bookends these two narrators guide us into the play “Flu Season.”

The action takes place in a mental hospital with a staff that’s probably watched too many episodes of “Frasier.”  The nurse and doctor interrupt the patients, fill in the dead space, and generally reminisce about their own lost youth.  Two patients, a young man and woman, try haltingly to find words that have often failed them.  Playwright Will Enosa creates a strange and wonderful world where people struggle with uncertainty and almost comically collapse in each other’s arms.

The University of Tennessee Theater Department has assembled a superb cast whose verbal dexterity is on fine display.  Jonathan Vissor, Michael Moreno, Amy Elizabeth Mathews, Steve Fitchpatrick, and Matthew Bassett keep us laughing and almost crying throughout the evening.

Director Edward Morgan keeps everything right up there on a high wire.  You feel like the theater is turned upside down and out spills what make us all tick.

When the character Prologue, ever hopeful, tells us the play has ended, a shout from the rear by his counterpart Epilogue reminds us, nothing really ends.

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