ORONO – The revitalized Cyrus Pavilion Theatre at the University of Maine is the perfect place to stage Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.” With only 89 seats in the three-quarter round performance space, watching the production is like peering through a neighbor’s window.

By his own admission, this is the playwright’s most autobiographical work. Durang, 51, drew heavily from his Catholic childhood in Montclair, N.J. Just like Bette and Boo, Durang’s parents fought constantly over his father’s drinking until they divorced when the writer was a teen-ager.

A graduate of Harvard and Yale universities, Durang is best known for his play “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It all for You.” Robert Brustein was dean of the Yale School of Drama when Durang was in graduate school. In 1998, he described the playwright as “an angelic altar boy with poison leeching through his writing fingers” and “a literary Jack the Ripper.”

Durang’s plays, however, are sidesplittingly funny and shed light into the dark crevices of the human heart. In “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” he turns his lethal pen on the pain families and institutions such as marriage and the church inflict in the name of love.

Director Tom Mikotowicz has a habit of picking dense plays, but only scratching the surface of their meaning. As with previous productions such as “The Tempest” and “Arcadia,” Mikotowicz’s latest production is technically flawless. His biggest fault as a director is his inability to help his young actors find and express emotions onstage they have not experienced in life.

In “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” Mikotowicz’s actors capably portray the angry and bitter feeling that run like a raging river through this union wracked by alcohol and religion. Most cast members, however, never show the love that lies buried beneath the anger. While that love erupts at the end of the play, the audience should sense from the actors that such an emotional outburst is possible. The primary weakness of this production is that as an ensemble, Mikotowicz’s actors give almost no hint of that thing called love.

“The Marriage of Bette and Boo” is made up of 33 short scenes woven together by the narration of the couple’s son, Matt. As portrayed by Sean Edgecomb, however, Matt is a dissonant rather than harmonizing force in the play. While Edgecomb looks like the grown up Christopher Robin that Bette always wanted her son to be, the actor has none of the A. A. Milne character’s charm.

Durang wrote scenes for Matt the child, Matt the teen-ager, Matt the college student and Matt the grown man. Edgecomb captures the vulnerable, precocious child, but never moves Matt past the angry, irritating college man to maturity. Matt is, after all, Durang the playwright and of all the onstage characters, he must be fully human rather than a caricature. Edgecomb offers the audience only a shadow of the multidimensional character Durang created from his own life.

Michelle McCann’s Bette is the bubbly post-World War II bride whose sole goal is to serve her husband, her children and God. As her husband sinks further into drink and she continues to give birth to stillborn babies, Bette questions everything in her life, but finds no answers. Somehow, Bette remains optimistic even as life slips away from her at the end of the play.

McCann captures all of Bette’s sweetness along with her determination to mold her husband and son into the family she constantly imagines. What is evident from McCann’s portrayal is where and how Bette finds such fortitude while her sister fades in and out of mental illness. While she mines more from her character than other actors, McCann still just breaks the surface of the deep pool that is Bette.

Boo is played by Adam Kuykendall, who brings unexpected subtlety to the role of the family drunk. Kuykendall easily could have slipped into stumbling stereotype. Instead, the actor exposes the demons that hide in the dark corners of Boo’s subconscious.

In a funny, bittersweet scene, a drunken Boo tries to vacuum the gravy he spilled on the rug during an over-the-top Thanksgiving dinner. In this scene, Kuykendall illuminates every layer of the man – the war hero, the selfish drunk, the inattentive husband, the father mourning his dead babies, the man longing to make his marriage work but who’s never willing to change. His is the most haunting portrayal in this production.

Irene Dennis and Alan Gallant are Bette’s parents, Margaret and Paul. Dennis bears an uncanny resemblance to English actress Joan Plowright. She also brings depth to the mother whose three daughters all lead dysfunctional lives. Whether by design or accident, her sing-song delivery gets gratingly irritating by the second act. Despite the fact that his character’s speech is almost unintelligible due to a stroke, Gallant manages to make him understood. He also mercilessly upstages his fellow actors when his character is shrouded for one scene.

Boo’s parents, Karl and Soot, are played by Sean Fidler and Jasmine A. Ireland. Fidler captures all the mannerisms and blustery bravado of the man, but never really finds his mean, misogynous heart. The actor is satisfied to play the buffoon. Ireland’s Soot, whose name remains an unanswered question, is a red-haired beauty nearly crushed by her overbearing husband. Ireland has a great comic gift, but never finds the survivor in Soot.

Bette’s sisters, the abrasive Joan and fragile Emily, are played by Katherine N. Braginton and Kate Perry. Braginton never gets deeper than the angry stereotype, but Perry finds a gentle strength in the nervous Emily. The young actress shows the audience there is a self-protective method to Emily’s retreats into madness. Perry’s performance is a sparkling jewel amidst mostly unpolished gems.

Chez Cherry’s intimate set works well in the sheep-barn-turned-theater. Jane Snider’s costumes have a whimsical functionality, especially Bette’s wedding dress, which she wears throughout the play in one form or another. Laura Mae Fer, Melanie McGlinchey and Daniel Lanpher, who created the designs for lighting, makeup and sound, also make significant contributions to a production that is almost technically perfect.

University productions should not be measured with the same standards used to judge professional theater companies. Most often those involved, from the actors to the crew, are learning, studying and honing their craft. Those who teach them, however, should be masters who pass on to their students basic skills they can build on. If Mikotowicz is going to tackle emotionally deep material like “Bette and Boo,” it is essential he give his actors the tools they will need to mine it.

The “Marriage of Bette and Boo” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 581-1755.