This is one of those times when the laboratory play in the Late Night Theatre series is more interesting than the one being presented on the main stage.

"A Letter to my Mother at the End of the World," written by Kemuel DeMoville and directed by Kate Nipko, both UH graduate students, is peppered with cliches and suffers from poor staging choices, but it's built around a kernel of possibility that sustains the play and that could support its development.

The central character is Angela (Danielle Vivarttas-Ahrnsbrak), a troubled and perhaps clinically depressed 14-year-old, living with her father (Alvin Chan) after her parents' divorce. Withdrawn from school and friends, Angela mentally prepares a letter to her mother that she never commits to writing.

Convinced that she is unloved and unwanted, Angela retreats into the sitcom world of her television. She doesn't just watch it excessively — losing sleep and missing school as a result. She uses it to modify reality, replaying real encounters with sitcom-based substitutes and patterning her behavior on a sitcom-inspired history.

She also creates imaginary sitcom parents who offer intermittent respite and perhaps ultimate shelter from the real world that marginalizes her.

But the current production is seriously flawed.

Director Nipko seems to have overlooked the basic rule of Directing 101: "Put your actors where the audience can see them and hear them."

The lab theater stage is empty and used only intermittently for school scenes. The primary playing area is the sofa, where Angela reclines to watch television, and an armchair, from which her father issues parental platitudes.

Nipko puts them in front of the stage, almost up against the knees of the front-row audience. When Angela slouches to the floor (which she does often) and when her father leans forward in his chair, they completely disappear from view.

Angela's mental letter is done as a recorded voice-over and is not always audible. Vivarttas-Ahrnsbrak's approximation of a 14-year-old's petulant mumble is often lost, as is Jaedee-Kae Vergara's high-pitched, rapid-fire jumble of dialogue as a high-school classmate.

"This play challenges the audience to view the way we connect with people," explains DeMoville in a news release, "... and whether or not those interactions are sincere." Program notes, however, defer to the audience to "decide for yourself what it's about."

"A Letter to my Mother at the End of the World" would do well to de-emphasize its reality scenes and develop Angela's pathology for television as reality. That's an idea worth exploring, and this lab production might best serve as a springboard to a better play.