‘Borrego’ Goes to the Edge, Stays There

If you’ve ever had the queasy suspicion your life was a horror movie, “Borrego” at the Hudson Theatre Backstage might strike a familiar chord. Anyone seeking to empathize with a more mainstream context, however, will likely want to give this one a wide berth.

Robert Glaudini’s atmospheric but often ponderous new play centers on the set of a no-budget apocalyptic sci-fi flick about an invasion of giant alien bugs. During the angst-ridden filming, boundaries between surface reality and archetypal muck start to break down.

Against a moral backdrop as bleak and desiccated as the desert in which the movie is being shot, identity issues plague the star (Miranda Bailey) as she struggles with cocaine abuse and a domineering director (Tony Campisi). Diving into the fray are her drug dealer/journalist boyfriend (Joseph Murphy) and her self-destructive poet sister (Shannon Holt), whose identity they’re determined to conceal for reasons that remain stubbornly opaque.

More apparent is a plethora of heavy-handed dialogue (“I’m not so young if age is measured by humiliations”). Flaunting her character’s numerous scars as “Braille to read my life on,” Holt has a field day snarling Patti Smith-style verse. A later God-as-spider motif reminiscent of “Through a Glass Darkly” completes all the fixings for an Ingmar Bergman parody, but unfortunately Ian Belton’s staging takes itself far too seriously.

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* “Borrego,” Hudson Theatre Backstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 21. $15. (888) 566-8499. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.