'Lidless' by InterAct Theatre, about Abu Ghraib, Gitmo

I'm not sure where to assign blame for InterAct Theatre's production of

Lidless

, as so many factors conspire against it.

It's fair to start with Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's script and its tangle of themes. (Science fiction, politics, religion, war, addiction, sex, violence - shall I continue?) They show enough dramatic promise that their failure to fuse causes a real letdown, accompanied by a sense of betrayal when they veer, instead, toward cheap melodrama.

This is a play about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, about the inversion of rape as a weapon of war, and the use of women's bodies as instruments of torture - here, that of former soldier Alice (Kittson O'Neill), Alice. Cowhig hits some meaty ideas, such as the national pastime of forgetting the past and thus being doomed to repeat it. When Bashir (J. Paul Nicholas) arrives in Alice's postwar flower shop asking her to donate part of her liver for a transplant (he contracted hepatitis while imprisoned under her watch), she doesn't remember him or Gitmo, thanks to special Army-issued medication. And thanks to the efforts of her husband Lucas (Ed Swidey) and best friend and fellow soldier Riva (Gamze Ceylan), all traces of her service are packed away where she'll never see them.

While there's enough potential conflict for all, Cowhig also gives Alice and Lucas a disturbed 14-year-old daughter, Rhiannon (Sarah Van Auken), who makes Wednesday Addams look like a breath of fresh air. As directed by Seth Rozin, she's a cartoon, all right, but completely wrong for this naturalistic drama. Van Auken speaks in a phony babyish voice, overplays every moment she's onstage, and somehow manages to ring false even when stomping off. The impact of a child who murdered her way through a menagerie of pets lies in her banality, her moments of childishness, not her overt weirdness. Nicholas - subtle, surprising - is clearly this show's anchor, but he's pulling against a world of dead weight.

The dialogue ranges from airily poetic to agonizingly clunky ("We both know there was a time when you were a soldier and I was a junkie," Lucas tells Alice; thanks, now we all know). The set is uncharacteristically literal and dull, dominated by flat, gray globes and chain link. Unfortunately, it is the last work from the late, great designer Hiroshi Iwasaki, who died in November.

Add it all up, and Lidless' redemption, much like that of its characters, is painfully out of reach.

Theater

Lidless

Presented through Feb. 13 by InterAct Theatre Company, 2030 Sansom St. Tickets: $20-$32. Information: 215-568-8079; www.interacttheatre.org