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There's much to applaud in Salt Lake Acting Company's ambitious premiere of "Bull Shark Attack": bold acting, beautiful language, a nicely wrought stripped-down set, enchanting lighting design and a rich sound score.

Technically this is a fine production, which shines a spotlight on the storytelling. Playwright Troy Deutsch's monologues are interestingly written, beautiful language from a talented emerging playwright, but there's not enough authentic emotional scaffolding to hold up under the weight of all those words.

The three characters' monologues, even as their stories knot together at the ending, just don't add up. The characters ultimately seem like complex writing exercises, rather than real people.

Director Sandra Shotwell deftly helps the actors manage pacing and dynamics as "Bull Shark Attack" unfolds and all three actors turn in richly layered performances, yet at the end you can't help but wonder what the point was.

Theatergoers never learn, exactly, why April Fossen's Connie shut down and turned away from her husband before his cancer diagnosis. So when Fossen beautifully enacts the character's naked vulnerability in the second act — she's the best actor in town at performances one note short of brittle — we can't quite understand her transformation.

It's intriguing to begin to realize how unreliable Stefan Espinosa's anxious Jeffie is, but his childhood anxieties don't seem enough to fuel the lack of awareness that causes him to become his own kind of bully.

Cassandra Stokes-Wylie, as Tanya, a big-haired small-town girl with thwarted big-city ambitions, offers a tour de force performance in the tour de force role that Deutsch says he wrote for her. Stokes-Wylie is pitch perfect, even mesmerizing, but her character doesn't have the self-awareness to be revealing.

Two of the characters seem focused on the themes of life and death, while the third seems to be concerned about the dark side of ambition, which might be considered its own kind of death. While the script dances with exploring issues of class in American small towns, without more of a pointed narrative aim, the story can't build to a satisfying emotionally believable conclusion.

facebook.com/ellen.weist —

Sharks, aliens and sleeplessness! Oh my!

Ambitious performances anchor a not-entirely-satisfying script.

When • Reviewed Friday, Sept. 9; continues through Oct. 16; performances Wednesday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 and 6 p.m.

Additional shows • Tuesday, Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 15, 2 p.m.

Where • Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 W. 500 North, Salt Lake City

Tickets • $15-$42 (student/senior/group/30-and-under discounts), at 801-363-7522; saltlakeactingcompany.org

Running time • 90 minutes, with one intermission