Early in “Straight White Men,” the very entertaining new play written and directed by Young Jean Lee at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, the play’s titular siblings chance upon the home-made board game their mother had made them play when they were children, called “Privilege.”

Crudely adapted from a cast-off Monopoly set, the game flips that game’s materialism in an attempt to sensitize the boys to the special rights and benefits they were born with as straight white males. Upon drawing an “Excuses” card, one of the brothers reads aloud, “What I just said wasn't racist/sexist/homophobic because I was joking. Pay $50 to an LGBT organization.” (A line that drew one of many big laughs from the packed preview crowd, this Sunday.)

The three brothers have all internalized the teachings of the board game in their own way. And, over the course of 90 breezy and funny minutes set during a homecoming over a Christmas weekend, the family works through the fallout from such self-knowledge – sorting out (or failing to) what is real achievement and what is true usefulness.

Rather than satirize the Great White Male then, “Straight White Men” presents characters who are all too aware of their privileged position and sympathetically portrays the perils of living an over-examined life. Which is to say that Lee has the audacity to write not about how the titular group oppresses others but how they (if they are conscientious) are oppressed by the burden of their station.

Matt (Brian Slaten) – the eldest brother who has always been the most committed to the mother’s strain of liberal self-abnegation – is the problem, puzzle, and inarticulate heart of the play. He has spent his life helping villagers in Africa, in graduate school, and at various low-level jobs at non-profits. Now he’s crippled with student loan debt and a crisis of conscience – living with the boys’ (now widowed) father and prone to crying jags.

Like Zooey Glass in her titular Salinger novella, Matt seems to be paralyzed by an inability to truly live one’s ideals – or has perhaps pursued them to their logical self-erasing ends.

The other brothers revere their older sibling, even in the face of Matt’s failure to live up to his early promise. Younger brother Drew (Frank Boyd) is a novelist and professor who urges Matt to beat back his self-loathing through therapy. And middle brother Jake (Gary Wilmes) is a blithe banker and recent divorcèe who projects his own abandoned idealism onto this brother’s stasis.

Heady and well-observed, “Single White Men,” is a great opportunity to see the latest exceptional work from Young Jean Lee – whom the New York Times has called “a formally daring and intellectually curious experimentalist,” and NPR has called “arguably one of the hottest playwrights in American right now.”

In the three brothers and their sympathetic father, Lee has created four strong, individuated voices. And the excellent cast makes the most of what she has given them. Gary Wilmes in particular gives a wonderfully physical performance in the play’s flashiest role is as the cynical and cocky middle brother.

“Single White Male,” runs until December 20. Ticket prices are between $25 and $55, but there really isn’t a bad seat in the house, so…

Tix are available online at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org, by calling 213.628.2722, or at the Kirk Douglas Theatre box office two hours prior to performances.

The Kirk Douglas Theatre is located at 9820 Washington Blvd. in Culver City.