Laugh out loud at a silent retreat

“Now, I’m not suggesting you will die during our five days together ...” says the voice of a teacher, by way of an introduction to her participants, near the beginning of “Small Mouth Sounds.”

This is at a silent meditation retreat, so it’s among the few words spoken in Bess Wohl’s play, which begins a two-month run this week at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand Theater as part of a national tour of the acclaimed off-Broadway production.

In writing the play, Wohl was inspired “by a silent spiritual retreat I participated in at the Omega Institute in upstate New York,” she writes in an author’s note. And then, in a note farther down: “Everyone in this play is in some kind of agony.”

Whether you indulge in or inveigh against the so-called “wellness” industry, this show should supply some spiritual manna — or at least some laughs. Rachel Chavkin directs.

T. Charles Erickson / American Conservatory Theater Ben Beckley and Edward Chin-Lyn in “Small Mouth Sounds.”