Actually, "High Holidays," which runs through Nov. 29, could be a rare treat, especially for fans of Gross' earlier plays, such as "Lunching," his yuppie comedy that took the off-Loop world by storm in 1977, or the equally popular "The Man in 605." His playwriting career was interrupted by a stint in Hollywood (more about that later, he promises) but now he's back with a comedy/drama mined from the depths of his own life, a Jewish kid growing up in Skokie in the 1960s.

Still, he won't quite admit that the play is autobiographical, "for fear my relatives will come at me with lawsuits and 22-caliber pistols," he says, deadpan. So let's just say that "High Holidays" is set in 1963, in a fictional Chicago suburb, and centers on a family making preparations for the bar mitzvah of one of the two sons, Billy. The simcha plans proceed with dysfunction galore, especially when Billy's older brother returns from college for the High Holidays and tensions escalate, with both comedic and highly dramatic results.

Or as the playwright himself says, "We call it a comedy because no one's dead at the end, but it ain't exactly 'Married With Children.' It's a little gut-wrenching, a difficult play that asks a lot of questions. It's a rocky ride but satisfying in the end."

With the comedy part, Gross is revisiting his roots. He came up the Chicago improv way, working with giants in the field such as Del Close and Paul Sills, as well as Byrne Piven, the late co-founder of Evanston's Piven Theatre. It was Close who first challenged him to write a real play; he responded with "Lunching," an instant hit.

Despite his success on Chicago stages, Gross moved to Hollywood in 1986, hoping for screenwriting success. Although he wrote 13 of them-"love stories, workplace stories, ghost stories," he says-not one got made. In Los Angeles, "I had every nightmare you can imagine. If I talk about it, I'll hyperventilate," he says. Now he's back in Chicago with no desire to return to the land of palm trees and movie stars. "I had my 13 years there; it was full of bad behavior, some of it mine," he contends.

"High Holidays" began to materialize during a discussion Gross had with a friend about the classic family dramas of the American theater, plays by the likes of Wilder, Odets, Miller, O'Neill.

"They didn't seem to be my story," he says. "I felt around for what I could do. Then my mother died, and suddenly we had her photo books, her scrapbooks, all the things of her life." His ideas for the new play "all focused on experiences around her. I started to write and put things together and look at the different places in my life."

Two seminal periods stood out: his bar mitzvah year and himself at 20, "when I wanted to quit college and be an artist and take to the road, a sort of cross between Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan. That didn't sit well" with his parents, but he used it in the play for the experiences of the two brothers.

The time period is crucial too: "In the '60s, American life started to unravel," he says. "I remember stories of fathers shooting their sons because their hair was too long. There's that kind of tension in this, but we react to it in a funny manner."

Gross adds he is grateful for the encouragement of Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls, an old friend. "He said (the play) was raw, hard to look at at times," he says. "But this was something I had to get out of my system. I think that's what made it successful." And he mock-warns, "There's a lot of Yiddish in it. I don't translate it like they do on TV. Either you know it or you have to learn. If someone screams something (in Yiddish) with loud terrible anger, you have to know it's a curse." He isn't worried about audiences not understanding: "I've been in Edinburgh and seen plays done in Middle Scotch and I got it."

More vexing though to others, not so much to him, is the question of whether he is 'a Jewish playwright.' "It depends on where you put the comma," he says. "I'm a Jewish person who is a playwright." He seems to think better of that answer: "At 62 years old, I'm a Jewish playwright. 'High Holidays' is as much about Judaism as I've ever written."

As for his own brand of the religion, he says that "other than pastrami and challah, I don't live a particularly Jewish life. I ask my wife, a fallen-away Polish Catholic, if we live like Jews, and she says yes, we live like all the other Jews we know. I don't eat bacon because it's bad for you." Meanwhile, he says he is feeling more and more Irish and would like some day to write an Irish, or perhaps an Irish-Jewish play. "I love Ireland," he says. "I completely skipped that phase when middle-aged Jews join the Republican Party. I just skipped over that and now I'm a Celt."

He's also a working playwright again and he says he loves it, rhapsodizing about how much better it is than his other jobs, not just the screenwriting gig but the time he spent at the Leo Burnett advertising agency as a copywriter and, before that, writing greeting cards for Hallmark.

"You never called me to ask what do I think of greeting card writing in America today," he says, sounding perfectly serious about my lapse. "No one calls you. When you're a playwright, people think you're profound. It is a marvelous privilege to be a playwright. I don't know why I ever stopped."

"High Holidays" runs from Saturday, Oct. 31 to Sunday, Nov. 29 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, Chicago. For tickets, $10-$40, call (312) 443-3800 or visit GoodmanTheatre.org.