Funerals can be sad, yes, but they can also be funny and even life-changing.

The Purple Rose Theatre is presenting the Michigan premiere of Eric Feffinger’s Fourteen Funerals, a very funny comedy with a very serious look at friendship, family, and life from the perspective of two very different women from two very different places.

Sienna is a young Chicago woman with aspirations of becoming a published writer. She has received a confusing call to come to small town Blissfield, Indiana, to present a eulogy for a relative she’s never met. She’s intrigued, she’s curious, she needs money, she needs to escape from Chicago if just for a day. But when she arrives she’s informed that 14 relatives have all died in an explosion of fireworks and she must give a eulogy for all of them at 14 separate funerals.

Millie is the funeral director’s daughter who has asked her to come. Millie is a young woman who loves Blissfield and hates Blissfield. But she’s ever optimistic. She’s learning all the ins and outs of being a funeral director. She’s funny, even a little goofy and leary about the woman from the city.

Both of these women are at a crossroads and harbor secrets that are revealed over the two weeks that Sienna struggles to present eulogies for people she’s never met even if they are relatives.

From the beginning director Rhiannon Ragland keeps the action between the two women fast and in the very different voices of big-city Chicago and small-town Blissfield—not so distant from each other but lightyears apart. As the play continues the tempo becomes less hectic, the tone more serious, but still funny.

Ashley Wickett plays Millie—outgoing, eager to learn the business (or is she?), proud of her home town and bored of it. Wickett captures all those contrary positions. After all, a good funeral director has to keep a solemn but happy demeanor for the grieving.

Shonita Joshi plays Sienna, the city woman. Her parents left Blissfield for the big city and Sienna has no memories of the town. Where Wickett’s Millie wears dresses. Joshi’s Sienna wears pants, a tee shirt, and a jacket. Joshi swaggers and demands answers. But she begins to like the small-town woman if not the small town.

The play centers on the short eulogies that are presented for each of Sienna’s relatives. The eulogies reveal in comic and serious ways the rift that sent Sienna’s parents to the more accepting big city. But they also reveal a family that contained many different personalities, who all enjoyed a good fireworks display.

Wickett and Joshi play off of each other beautifully.

The set design by Sarah Pearline is striking. It is an eye-grabbingly perfect presentation of a funeral parlor with elaborate walls with embossed town scenes, a blue and white rug, and furniture that seems to be in every funeral parlor whether it’s in a small town or a big city.

Pfeffinger has a lot to say about a lot of things in this play. It’s a comedy that keeps the audience laughing but then shifts into consideration of the issues that both women are forced to confront. You’ll laugh but you’ll also get a serious presentation of tough issues from very different perspectives.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.

The Purple Rose Theatre Company presentation of Eric Pfeffinger’s "Fourteen Funerals" continues Thursdays through Sundays at 137 Park Street, Chelsea. For tickets, call the box office at 734-433-7673 or go to purplerosetheatre.org.