Good Plays, Bad Endings : Three one-act works by Richard Dresser are observant, comical looks at relationships between families and business associates.

Richard Dresser once wrote a brief one-act titled “The Road to Ruin.” It’s a minor piece with a title that says everything about Dresser’s world--which is to say, America.

He likes to set his plays in such places as Indiana and New England and Florida and New Jersey, but whatever the specific place, the pressures of a collapsing country are ever-present.

Dresser wrote a lot of his works, like the three one-acts under the group title of “Splitsville,” produced by Interact Theatre Company at Theatre Exchange, before the worst of the recession hit. They don’t feel dated, however. Dresser’s people can hear The Great Big Sucking Sound, the force south of the border that Ross Perot says will take American jobs and souls. They don’t have a clue what to do next.

Maybe that’s why it’s hard to swallow the optimistic, even sentimental endings Dresser tacks onto “Bed and Breakfast,” “Bait and Switch” and the titular finale, “Splitsville.” He loves writing about people who are down, but he can’t stomach opening the hatch and watching them go to hell.

Up until the endings, though, these are smart, often observant and comically cruel looks at relationships between families and business associates (who are sometimes one and the same). Director James Gleason and his actors closely listen to the sounds of this Cruel New World.

Even in the least of the three, “Bed and Breakfast,” the basic Dresser rules apply: There are the Innocent, there are the Nasty, and it’s eat or be eaten. Although we’re at a B & B near Stonehenge in England, everyone except the suicidal hostess (a daft Annie Abbott) is American. One couple (Mary Carver and Steven Gilborn) are here to stay, because Gilborn’s exquisitely blank Claude takes a relaxant medication that virtually wipes out his memory. Carver’s hard Alice turns soft every day when Claude asks her to go with him to Stonehenge.

The other couple, Sarah and Chuck (Marilyn McIntyre and James Harper), are new here, and newly wed. He’s from kin who lived in a shack and dined on road kill, while she’s from wealth. Sarah likes Claude’s medicine, since it may turn Chuck from an animal into a human being. Things move along too snappily to ask why Sarah and Chuck got married in the first place.

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“Bait and Switch” isn’t nearly as far-fetched, and it’s infinitely more ironic. Brothers Gary (James Gleason) and Doug (Doug Ballard) are trying to rescue their dying restaurant by bringing in a new partner (the deliciously smarmy Eddie Jones), who happens to be an attorney for the Mob. Though Gary is concerned that he’s sending his wife (McIntyre, in her own fine switch from the previous piece) and family down the toilet, Doug optimistically keeps sniffing for deals.

The switch begins with the swanked-up restaurant that Jones’ Kenny has made out of the former dive (his special cocktail, the Shipwreck, is one of the most mordant stage props--by Karen J. Westerfield--in memory). This is a comedy of 180-degree reversals that seldom announce themselves, a game the cast plays superbly.

“Splitsville,” while the least formulaic of the trio, feels like a full-length play trapped inside a one-act. In dizzying succession, a Florida theme park called the Black Hole is being built; Roy and Wendy’s (Dave Florek and Jane Lanier) apartment is about to be demolished; Roy and Wendy as well as her parents, Gary and Jill (Gilborn and Sharon Madden), are about to separate; and Wendy’s boss, Betty (Carver) wants to promote Wendy into the job of “servicing” potential business partners.

It’s a savage, cartoonish conjunction--again--of family and business, and the cast captures the apocalyptic frenzy of the writing, so similar to Dresser’s fine black comedy, “Better Days.” Florek re-creates his bodybuilding bouncer from the first New York staging, and it’s a model of dead-panning for gold. Jim Wood’s set and Emanuel Treeson’s lights don’t announce themselves until the last, heavenly moment.

Where and When What: “Splitsville.” Location: Interact Theatre Company at Theatre Exchange, 11855 Hart St., North Hollywood. Hours: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 21. Price: $10 to $12. Call: (818) 773-7862.