SMALL TRAGEDY

At Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. Ticket Central, (212) 279-4200. Through March 28.

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IF you’re going to attempt to show how real life eerily parallels the story of a play you’re putting on, you’d better be sure the whole thing makes sense.

Craig Lucas – author of “Prelude to a Kiss,” “Reckless” and “The Dying Gaul” – attempts as much in “Small Tragedy,” which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons.

Alas, Lucas forgot to have the whole thing make sense.

Under Mark Wing-Davey’s alert and adroit direction, the story concerns the making of a student production of “Oedipus Rex” at a college in Cambridge, Mass.

First come the auditions. Then the rehearsals. Then the dress rehearsals. Then the performances. It is all very dull.

Finally, in a surprising development, there’s a macabre postscript in New York in which a shocking revelation emerges about one of the players. This revelation results in yet more implausible melodrama. The whole thing is both last-minute and incredible.

The acting is busy and earnest. The best, most nuanced playing (because he’s given the most to play with) is by Lee Pace as Hajika, a handsome Muslim student from Bosnia, full of tales of Serbian atrocities, who snags the role of Oedipus.

But it’s all total gibberish.