Once and for all can the question be answered: Can we go home again? Playwrights from Chekhov to Wilder have renewed the debate and, of course, the answer will always have to be Maybe, depending on the place and who was — and may still be — in it.

In the first of three short plays, all by Island writers, and presented by the Island Theatre Workshop at Katharine Cornell in Vineyard Haven as Pick of the Crop, budding playwright Peter Palches poses this question in Sam Meets Maria. Sam (George Ricci) a successful lawyer, revisits the old inner city neighborhood of his childhood. He stands musing on a street corner, picking up small, recognizable totems of the long-ago landscape, although we realize that what was once a cohesive Little Lithuania to him is now a different ’hood of restructured shops and ethnicities. And yet . . . he’s home. He’s home in spite of what keeps most of us from being able happily to go home again: all the original players in one’s early life. Sam, on the contrary, is home because those same players are still missing from the vicinity of himself.

An old lady, Maria (masterfully portrayed by Niki Patton, playing a much older woman than herself) sweeps her front porch. Recognition comes quickly: she introduces herself as a 16-year-old mail-order bride of the early 20th century, taken in by a kind young woman who was destined to become Sam’s mother. Maria is able to fill in some of the blanks of Sam’s parents’ past, part of which had caused Sam and his own son to become estranged.

Sam Meets Maria is sensitively directed by Lee Fierro who’s been acting, directing, writing and composing on the Vineyard since she arrived in 1974. Stage manager is Betsy Hauck.

Birds of Feathers is written and acted by Taffy McCarthy who has been entertaining local audiences for at least two decades. If in earlier days she had headed for Hollywood rather than settling here, with her looks, presence and acting versatility she could have possibly carved out for herself a Julia Roberts-sized career. The loss of a movie-star-manqué is our Island’s gain.

In this one-woman one-act play, Birdie (Ms. McCarthy) is dealing with her empty nest syndrome in a manner best described as Deterioration in Geometric Progression. Her baggy pants and floppy shirt show the seediness of having been both slept and lived in for quite some time. She hasn’t left the house in 12 days; we can identify at least three mental disorders going on here: agoraphobia, depression and lack of hygiene. Ms. McCarthy’s hysteria has a slapstick edge that keeps us laughing, as does her ineffable denial with lines such as “I don’t really need to go out today,” and “I love this kitchen!”

Ms. McCarthy’s daughter Chelsea, also well known to Island theatregoers, has an editing credit, and we can assume her own young adulthood inspired her mother’s theme of combined pathos and humor. Bird of Feathers is directed with the usual snap we’ve come to expect of Kaf Warman, locally renowned director and resident of Oak Bluffs, professor at Carnegie-Mellon and artistic director of Island Theatre Workshop.

The final one-act in the trio of plays, Time for a Roll Call by John Ortman, is still in early workshop format as witnessed by the cast of 11 (Ted Leslie, Linda Berg, Eli Dagostino, Taylor McNeely, Pat Rose, Treather Gassman, Aaron Duclos, Xavier Powers, Terri McCarren, Jimmy Dimattia and Peter Palches) seated in a row of chairs with open scripts. Mr. Ortman reads directions and narrative.

The basic bones of the story are good: Dad is haunted by his World War II battles, yet by avoiding coming to terms with his PTSD, he re-enacts hostilities with the most vulnerable of his three sons. This sorry working-class family, lurching its way through the 1960s, has no clue how to disentangle its manifold misunderstandings and animosities. All cast members are appealing, and Mr. Ortman serves up a strong narrator. Brad Austin, Stephanie Burke and Kevin Ryan put in their usual hard work on production.

Pick of the Crop continues tonight and Saturday night at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15. For details, call 508-627-3166.