COOS BAY — Five things about Clara Radcliffe: She’s captivating, funny, moving, has a booming voice and, as Virginia in “Thirteen Things About Ed Carpolotti,” is the best part of “Death Lite: Three One-Act Comedies About Death.” The Dolphin Players production, directed by Alice Carlson, opens tonight at Southwestern Oregon Community College.

The subtitle is a bit of misnomer: Despite the playwrights’ intent and funny aspects of each play, the comedy label is not entirely fitting. Particularly with the first part of the triple-bill, “Under Control,” audiences are more likely to appreciate the play as a capably-acted drama if they aren’t waiting to laugh.

Both this and the second play, “Bits and Pieces,” focus on contrasts between two characters in dealing with the death of a loved one. In “Under Control,” the suicide of a wealthy patriarch brings his two adult children to the Florida home he shared with his second wife.

David (Byrell Justice), a film line producer, comes from Los Angeles; his sister, Connie (Amy Katrina), a journalist, comes from New York. Their approaches to life are likewise a continent apart. Connie questions everything, seeking understanding and the possibility of a better option. David demands order, always fearing the worst, and sees Connie’s questions and suggestions as opening the door to chaos.

Their stepmother, Frances (Joyce Kemp), has a detailed, complicated list of requirements for the service and the scattering of ashes on the lagoon behind the house, which naturally falls to David to execute. David and Connie suspect their father waited to kill himself until David arrived for a previously scheduled visit to ensure the consummate planner would be on hand to discharge the arrangements.

But David doesn’t find himself as well-equipped to handle it as everyone expects.

“I envy messy people,” he says. “I have to have order or I go to pieces.”

David’s neurotic obsession with order is where author Elinor Jones intended to locate the humor in her play, but it would probably take a more caricatured performance for it to come through. Justice’s David is so convincing of his need for stability that it seems hardly questionable, not remotely ridiculous. This is not necessarily bad thing, but it changes the play.

Laughs are more abundant in “Bits and Pieces,” but this play, too, succumbs to the weight of its subject matter as different styles of grieving pit the wife and sister of a well-known scholar against each other.

Radcliffe said she found the script unusually funny, recalling cackling away as she read it.

“I’m quite sure the neighbors thought there was something evil going on in my apartment,” she said.

Indeed, author Corinne Jacker has a way with cracking wise about German philosophy, but some of her attempts at lower humor are less successful.

Recently dead Philip Uberman (Justin McCarley) describes himself as “a professor of various subjects at various universities,” but he seems to be primarily a classicist, who somehow made a name for himself early enough to be well established in his field before dying in his 30s. Then, proving to be as eccentric in death as he was in life, he donated all of his organs and much of the rest of his body.

This infuriates his widow, Iris (ReGina Moreno), who feels having almost nothing left to bury adds insult to the injury of losing someone she made into her entire life. She turns to her sister-in-law, Helen (Cheri Valentine), for help finding meaning in the situation, but the two are almost completely incapable of understanding each other. Rather than stick around fighting, Iris sets out on a quest: to find all of the recipients of Philip’s organs and take a look at what they got from him.

“He gave his parts away for a reason,” Iris insists. “He wants me to know something.”

First, she has to get the list of recipients from a creepy doctor (Levi Goodman). It’s against medical ethics to comply, but he doesn’t have any. A sitcom lothario’s charm would help this character better fit the comedy mold, but Goodman is all business as he propositions women, including a technician (Katherine Andreasen).

On her trip, Iris meets a disabled man (Josh Jennings), a former swimmer (Chelsee Carter), an Italian (Kevin Thurkow) and an Indian monk (Tim Novotny). Each encounter brings her a vision of Philip, and the play flashes between these memories, the trip and discussions with Helen, as she and Iris remain always on the brink of being at each other’s throats.

The shortest and lightest play of the bunch is “Thirteen Things About Ed Carpolotti,” a monologue for Radcliffe, who also performed it in Astoria 10 years ago. She described her character, Virginia, as a hoot and a ditz.

A few weeks after the death of her husband, Virginia finds herself back in a funeral home, where she tells the story of the death’s aftermath. Ed, as everyone says, was “a real wheeler and dealer,” and his shady deals left Virginia with a mountain of debt.

Though the play is a monologue, there are several characters present in Virginia’s descriptions: Debbie, her daughter, whose every utterance Virginia can’t understand; Tootsie, her gossipy best friend in Boca Raton; Danny Spahr, the attorney who used to deliver milk; Bob O’Clock, the banker; Dino DiSerbio, a loan shark; Frank, Ed’s brother, and his wife, Lorraine; and Joy, the secretary of Ed’s business.

After finding out that Ed was six months behind on payments on a loan of half a million dollars from Dino, Virginia turns to Frank for help, only to learn that Ed owed Frank another $300,000. Frank suggests Virginia give up her house.

Just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, Virginia receives an anonymous note demanding $1 million to keep secret a list of 13 things about her husband and the embarrassing details of his shady deals. This predicament is far from how she imagined widowhood: drinking gin and tonics with Tootsie.

“Death Lite” runs through May 17. Performances are at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 11. Tickets are $8, $6 for seniors and free for students.