Thumbs up for the cast, especially, in ‘Other Hands’

British playwright Laura Wade works the manual metaphor hard in Other Hands, currently receiving its U.S. premiere courtesy of Luna Theater. During the play, four of the cast's eight hands are crippled by carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive stress injury, or perhaps just sympathy pains - no one can pinpoint the source. But while ice, braces, and injections dull the physical aches, the real handicap at the core of computer fix-it guy Steve's (Christopher Bohan) and corporate downsizer Hayley's (Amanda Grove) problems is their lack of dexterity with relationships.

With the isolating effect of technology the international artistic reference point it's become, and people, well, being what they are, this British import feels right at home. Steve and Hayley have lazily cohabitated for eight years in the sort of relationship in which, when Hayley tells Steve she wants to sleep with other people, he asks "Who?" not "Why?" But things get emotionally messy and physically painful when they cross paths with Lydia (Charlotte Northeast) and Greg (Rob Hargraves), to debilitating effect. Lydia is practically a shut-in, whose nervous chatter fills Steve's deflated ego when he makes a tech-support house call. Meanwhile, married Greg returns each of Hayley's verbal sallies with a loaded, but welcome, thrust.

Wade's dialogue has staccato rhythms and interruptions reminiscent of David Mamet. But though she, too, examines professional transgression (albeit in the transient workplace of the contemporary freelancer/consultant), her conclusions are far less incisive, and the play's construction shows the occasional clumsily welded seam.

In one scene, Steve, repairing Lydia's printer, announces, "Fatal" - as in the printer's display shows a fatal error. In the next, Hayley tells Greg over lunch about her diminishing attraction to Steve, saying, "Last week, for the first time, I noticed the noise he makes when he kisses me." Greg's response? "Fatal."

It's a too-clever pattern repeated throughout the script, and, much like Hayley's and Steve's ever-increasing enfeeblement, does more to call attention to itself than to further Wade's objective. Good thing that director Lena Mucchetti has such a strong cast at her disposal. Northeast's Lydia whirls with agitation, as taut as Bohan is limp, continually looking for something to busy her hands until called on to harness that energy in the service of others. Hargraves, wry and understated, is an alkaline counterpoint to Grove's acidity. All four finesse their Londoner accents, though Grove has more trouble mastering the snap of Wade's half-sentences. The actors also humanize Dirk Durosette's functional set, a pair of unadorned kitchens, bisected and framed by a black grid, all glowing with the blue-gray haze of a computer backlight.

Even with its flaws, there's bite in Wade's indictment of self-imposed isolation. She takes the long way around to show her audience that people need people, and though its destination is a bit of a letdown, the journey offers some good company along the way.