The individual ingredients, however, are quite compelling. Part satire and part screed about our media-soaked and obsessed culture, Sadgrrl13 mixes a number of modern-day elements into the show. The title character was a teenage girl who disappeared after developing an online relationship. She, however, is not a character in the play. Instead, it focuses on two groups dealing with the disappearance and online predators. At one end (literally, the stage is divided into three white-paneled rooms, a setting well designed by director Jeremy Wilhelm) is a TV news team who has investigated the disappearance. On the other end is Dick Jones, a man dedicated to discovering and "outing" online dangers.

As the play winds up to the end, the two worlds begin to merge. This happens in the middle room on stage, which represents the online world. There, the actors (figuratively) put on masks as they take on different digital personas. It's a nice trick, and one that is certainly better than having characters sitting at keyboards and typing, but it still comes off a bit too silly for the action. It's a good approach, but perhaps still not the solution for representing this new world on stage.

Hinkle crafts a stylized world here, with varying successes. Dick Jones' world—one in which he can put on a different face online that drowns out a nagging wife—stays sharp. The news world, presented mainly as a conflict between a headstrong reporter and his new boss, comes off as too shrill, with stretches where the characters are doing more lecturing than talking. On the other hand, the male/female power play between male reporter and female boss has a bit more meat, especially in a telling scene near the play's end.

So the pieces are there in Sadgrrl13, and the cast of six does a solid job throughout of bringing life and nuance to the characters. It's just a matter of bringing it all together into a cohesive whole to make the show hit as hard as Hinkle wants it to.

Sadgrrl13 runs through June 28 at the Playwrights' Center, 2301 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis. For tickets and more information, call 612-332-7481, Ext. 20 or visit www.workhauscollective.org.

- Ed Huyck