By David Hudgins. Directed by Marisa Smith. Produced by Solo Collective Theatre in partnership with InspireHealth. At Performance Works on Thursday, November 13. Continues until November 23

Small Parts is a bad play about a bad play—although a short run of scenes in Act 2 hints at what might have been.

This is a very personal project. When playwright David Hudgins’s mom was dying of cancer, he directed a script that she had written about her body. Hudgins acknowledges that the play, which was mounted in a gallery at the University of Waterloo, wasn’t successful. The characters were his mom’s organs—so her liver spoke, as did her ovaries. Directing the piece was a surreal, complicated experience for Hudgins and he wanted to explore it theatrically. Fair enough.

In Small Parts, we see Nate, a theatre professional, directing a script written by his dying mom, Irene. But in Small Parts, the mom’s play isn’t terrible in a funny or interesting way: it’s just flat and awful. And although Hudgins attempts to parody what happens in rehearsal rooms, especially with student casts, his observations are coarse: the two young actresses are so competitive that they count one another’s lines; one of them desperately wants to have sex with Nate to advance her career; and the only guy in the cast is a dope-smoking buffoon. They all say stupid things like “Make love to the text.” They’re cartoons.

But the other characters aren’t. Stylistically, Small Parts is all over the map. Nate’s sister, Ariel, who has mental-health issues, exists in the world of gritty realism. And Nate’s relationship with Irene, which wants to be at the core of the show, feels like nearly vacant space. There’s so little detail—they reveal next to nothing about their hearts or their back stories—that her anger and his guilt feel weightless.

The Act 1 capper, in which Nate accidentally reveals to the student cast that his mom is dying, fizzles. In the audience, we’ve known all along that Irene’s cancer is terminal, and it’s hard to care about the weepy reactions of the young actors—because they’re line drawings.

Act 2 brings more of the same. But it also includes a more coherent and satisfying set of scenes. When Ariel and Nate seriously discuss what the future holds for Ariel and their mom, you can feel their love. When Nate visits Irene in the hospital and generously tells her the show must go on, their mutual tenderness finally grounds that relationship. And when the show launches into a wacky musical number that features dancing ovaries, it’s stylish enough that the surrealism works.

Throughout the evening, the cast, under Marisa Smith’s direction, is working this material for all it’s worth—and more. Meaghan Chenosky, who has quickly established herself as one of the most gifted young actors in town, brings documentary-like authenticity to Ariel’s scary mood swings. I always believed that Jeff Gladstone knew where he was emotionally as Nate—even though the role is so underwritten that I didn’t. Similarly, Eileen Barrett brings furious determination to the sometimes impenetrable Irene. And Andrew McNee contributes his skilled slacker delivery as Dan, one of the student actors.

In the script itself, there are glimmers, but no bright light.