How I Learned to Drive, Actors' Shakespeare Project at Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, through November 25. 617-933-8600 or bostontheatrescene.com

"Everyone, everybody has their backroads." Actors Shakespeare Project's Elaine Vaan Hogue quotes this Paula Vogel observation in her "From the Director" notes in the playbill for the company's revival of the playwright's award-winning 1997 drama (1998 Pulitzer Prize) "How I Learned to Drive." Capturing the unflinching memory play's disturbing yet sometimes darkly humorous insights about the relationship of a young Maryland niece named L'IL Bit and her middle-aged uncle by marriage named Peck, the ASP's haunting staging proves as well-steered as an earlier edition at American Repertory Theatre featuring Debra Winger and husband Arliss Howard.

In Vogel's purposely out of chronological order drama—with flashbacks and flash forwards, grownup L'il Bit looks back reflectively at her troubling driver's lessons with Peck. Inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel "Lolita"—in which Humbert Humbert molests the title adolescent—yet determined to find actual sympathetic facets of the pedophile alcoholic uncle, Vogel has the emotionally conflicted niece credit him with teaching her how to be safe on the road and experience freedom when she drives.

While she never loses sight of Peck's very real sexual abusiveness—in her pre-adolescence at age 11 and throughout her teenage years, L'il Bit does recall her uncle being the only family member to support her dream of going to college. Although Vogel includes a chilling scene in which Peck gives L'il Bit's unseen cousin Bobby a fishing lesson that veers to probable sexual abuse on a treehouse, she does have his niece consider the possibility that her uncle may have been abused himself as a youth.

The complexity of L'il Bit's memories and the effect of her experiences on her own development as a woman make the audience's journey as challenging in its own way as her own. In fact, Vogel has admitted that she wanted "to get the audience to go along for a ride they wouldn't ordinarily take or even know they're taking." To that end, her chronology-defying drama (one that Pinter buffs may see having an affinity with the British playwright's structurally similar "Betrayal") has L'il Bit recall being expelled from college with her own drinking problem in 1968, refusing to dance at a sock hop in 1966, being photographed fairly provocatively by her uncle in 1965 and agreeing naively to once a week driving lessons in 1964 providing Peck does not "cross the line."

Vogel's richly balanced play does show L'il Bit's family often crossing the line in their own ways. Her misogynistic grandfather resorts to insults and putdowns. For her part, her grandmother does not believe in female orgasms. Still, L'il Bit's mother does advise her wisely about not mixing drinks and never leaving them unattended.

Disturbing family dysfunction aside, nothing is unattended in director Vaan Hogue's sharp pacing of a very strong cast. Jennifer Rohn brilliantly captures all of L'il Bit's vulnerability and growing insightfulness about her uncle's manipulative driving instruction. Never turning the growing pains-ridden niece into a victim, Rohn does bring convincing fury to her pushback against Peck as he insists that he is in love with her.

Trainor, Jr. finds all of Peck's dangerous elusiveness and pernicious charm. His seductive fishing lesson with unseen Bobby is as scary as Howard's in the memorable earlier A.R.T. effort. Amy Griffin, Sarah Newhouse and Tommy Vines as a very different modern day Greek chorus find all of the alternately humorous and questionable observation of family members—with Newhouse a riveting standout as she tries to advise L'il Bit about life and relationships.

For several decades, professor Vogel listened to students crying in her office about their own experiences. "How I Learned to Drive" remains both a timely warning and an affecting guide for adolescents and adults alike. ASP's riveting revival is as road ready as grownup L'il Bit.