Everyone in "Lake Untersee" is iced up. Rocky's emotional understanding of himself is frigid and unlikely to be thawed by his parents. They, too, have the warmth and flavor of an ice cube. Dad's girlfriend can't finish her painting because the pipes have frozen in her psyche.

Joe Waechter's new play, being produced by Workhaus Collective and Illusion Theater, has everyone digging into the surface of a lake in Antarctica, hoping to free the creature that Rocky believes will become his soulmate and salvation.

Waechter mixes realism and what appear, in Jeremy B. Cohen's production, to be flights of imagination in telling this story. Rocky (Michael Thurston) opens the play calling out for Charlie, a being that exists beneath Untersee, a freshwater lake near the rim of Antarctica. Charlie, though, is more a metaphor of Rocky's sexual identity than any tangible creature.

Rocky then retreats to humdrum life with his mother, Phyllis (Jennifer Blagen). A self-absorbed writer who can't write, Phyllis has no time for Rocky. She shuttles the boy off to live with his father, Jason (Michael Booth). That doesn't work any better, except that Rocky finds an outsider bond with Jason's artist girlfriend, Gale (Adelin Phelps).

Waechter's concept has some merit. Rocky has discovered something about himself that unnerves him. He grunts in inarticulate discomfort, runs away and hides. Perhaps borrowing from the fever fantasies of "Angels in America," Waechter proposes Rocky's imagined refuge in a frozen landscape.

However, the play's understanding of its universe and the actions of its characters frustrate our attempts to engage emotionally. These are not real people — they are types propped up with words from the playwright, and Cohen's production cannot chip away the artifice. Would educated parents — he a doctor, she a novelist — exhibit such clueless disregard for a son who is obviously in crisis? Waechter offers us paper-thin dialogue and gaping holes in simple logic that frustrate any desire to invest in these people.

The actors bring what they can. Thurston expresses the incoherent rage of misunderstood youth. Blagen's Phyllis at one point breaks down and admits that her writing well is dried up. Phelps' Gale shows a lively friendliness that allows Rocky to warm up. The character of Jason doesn't give Booth much of a chance to have a real moment.

Whether the frozen lake at the heart of "Lake Untersee" is real or not doesn't matter. We can accept it as a boy's magical retreat from life. Waechter's play, however, stumbles in creating enough real life to care if Rocky ever escapes.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299