By Dennis Foon, based on the novel by Michael Ignatieff. An Arts Club production. At the Revue Stage on Wednesday, April 11. Continues until April 28

There’s not enough to hold on to in Scar Tissue until it’s almost over.

In Dennis Foon’s adaptation of Michael Ignatieff’s novel, a professor named David obsesses over his mother Mary’s decline into Alzheimer’s. But why should we care? I’m not being cavalier when I ask this; my own mother is suffering from advanced dementia. But I know why I love my mother and I don’t know why David loves his. David is desperate to maintain—or reclaim—his connection to his mom, but we see so few of the details, the nuts and bolts of the bond, that narratively it has slight value. David agonizes over the question of why Mary gave up painting years ago, but for most of the play this is an abstract inquiry; Foon gives us little sense of what painting meant to her. So David’s quest feels vague.

It also feels more than a bit self-indulgent. As he frets about his mom and his own fear of Alzheimer’s, David puts his career as well as his relationships to his wife and son at risk. And the way he expects Mary to solve his problems, haranguing her for information she can’t convey, feels downright selfish.

Craig Erickson’s performance doesn’t help. I’m sure it’s deeply felt. It’s also very loud. Erickson delivers a lot of the text in a kind of strangled yell. “I’m nowhere near obsessive!” he roars.

Foon’s script wears its themes on its sleeve, pausing every now and then to consider the nature of fate. And its motivations are spelled out: “I wanted to blame him,” David says of his father.

About 15 minutes before it’s over, the play finally lands when it revisits a traumatic event from the past. From that point, the story exists in a credible world, but it has made us wait too long.

There are some fine performances in this Arts Club production, which was directed by Craig Hall. Haig Sutherland is blessedly understated as Nick, David’s neurologist brother, and Megan Leitch is simply present—that’s a good thing—as David’s wife, Anna. Especially in the still, naked moments in which she reveals the struggle beneath Mary’s lunacy, Gabrielle Rose’s portrait feels downright heroic.

Tom McBeath, who plays Mary’s husband, Alex, is usually an exemplary actor, but he is sporting a bizarre accent—or combination of accents—this time out. In the novel, Alex comes from Odessa. On opening night, McBeath's accent sounded Yiddish for most of the second act, but he toured around Canada, England, and Ireland for the first.

Yvan Morissette’s set—four large, abstract canvases beautifully lit by John Webber—is elegant, as is Malcolm Dow’s sound design.

Throughout this production, there are moments that ring painfully true—the sudden decline in Mary’s mobility, for instance—but there aren’t enough of them.