You can never go home.

If you’re best-selling author Eric Weiss in Donald Margulies’ “Brooklyn Boy,” — the final show in the 71st season of Antrim Playhouse, now on stage through Sunday — going home means visiting your ever-critical father in his Room 212 at Maimonides Medical Center, and still not measuring up.

ou present him with your book, which will debut at No. 11 on the bestseller list, and he says he thought the bestseller list only went up to ten. You explain it goes up to 15 now.

“Good thing they made the list longer,” he says. “Lucky for you.”

Having survived that run-in, you (still as Eric Weiss) grab a bite in the hospital’s cafeteria — and encounter a school chum who’s tickled to see you.

He has read your book, “Brooklyn Boy” a work of fiction, and is convinced the brilliant friend is modeled after him.

It’s fiction, you tell him. It’s not fact. The brilliant character is not him. Sure, he says.

He wonders why you’re not practicing the faith you had when you were bar mitzvahed. Oh, and his mom thinks your book is anti-Semitic.

If you can’t go home to Brooklyn, there’s always Manhattan.

You go home to the apartment your soon-to-be ex-wife will keep. No relief there, either. She’s got a date and boots you out of the apartment with a box of personal effects that used to mean something to her and are now yours alone. You want to try again, to save the marriage. She’s not interested.

There’s always work: You’re on a book tour. Go to L.A.

Read an excerpt of your book at a bookstore. Bask in the glow of groupies who adore your work — even your earlier work. Pick one. Take her back to your hotel.

Meet with the producer who has bought the rights to your book, the bestseller about growing up Jewish in Brooklyn. There’s a big star who wants to play the lead character, the character who is not you, you keep telling everyone.

One snag: The producer thinks your screenplay is still too “ethnic.” Reading a book about Jewish characters is one thing, she says, but Hollywood doesn’t know how to depict such exotic people.

Or, as she puts it: “Imagining Jews is much easier than actually seeing them.”

What’s a Brooklyn boy to do?

Playwright Margulies — a Pulitzer Prize-winner for “Dinner with Friends” in 2000 — covers a lot of ground here, and Antrim director Andrew Barrett’s approach is stylish and cinematic. The scenes are set with projections and the final scene is preceded by a montage of images we’ve seen over the course of the evening.

Antrim’s production values are high, particularly for community theater, but audiences have come to expect quality over 71 years.

Claudia Stefany’s costumes in this contemporary tale are spot on.

Barrett’s set is a series of periactoids — three sided towers that spin to suggest a change in location. John Sullivan’s Brooklyn Bridge, painted on the back wall, looms over the action.

The brisk first act — one hour — hums along as Weiss (played with angular economy by Peter Garruba) ping pongs from one encounter to another. During set changes, Garruba stands center stage in a spotlight, his world changing around him as he remains motionless.

Garruba’s Weiss is appropriately earnest, a writer unable to understand why people would wonder if a work of autobiographical fiction might be based on them. His journey opens up a wellspring of suppressed emotions that, in the end, get the better of him.

The cast is uniformly fine, from Antrim regular Joe DeSpirito as the cantankerous father to Paul Russo as the happy-go-lucky Ira Zimmer, Weiss’ long-ago friend.
Young actors Alanna Heraghty and Tommy Hettrick impress as the groupie and the Hollywood star. Elizabeth Scotson finds just the right mix of through-the-looking-glass Hollywood vision and cutthroat no nonsense as the producer.

Claudia Stefany has a tough task as Nina, Weiss’ soon-to-be ex. Nina is conflicted at times, resolute at others — a difficult balance to strike — but Stefany manages to deliver.

“Brooklyn Boy” isn’t a perfect piece of theater. Some scenes are too long and the writing tends to be less than poetic. But Antrim’s effort is exemplary, with a fine cast and first-rate production values that deliver on the emotional punch the final stage moment provides.

Don’t stay home. Get to Antrim this weekend, the final weekend in the run of “Brooklyn Boy.”

PHOTO by Andrew Barrett: Peter Garruba, left, is Eric Weiss, with Paul Russo as Ira Zimmer in “Brooklyn Boy” at Antrim Playhouse in Wesley Hills. The play closes Sunday.

“Brooklyn Boy”
Where: The Tom France Theater at Antrim Playhouse, 15 Spook Rock Road, Wesley Hills.
When: Through Sunday. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets: $16, $14 for students and seniors (Friday and Sunday only).
Call: 845-354-9503.
Web: www.antrimplayhouse.com.