"Boston Marriage," now in production by The Actors' Group in its Yellow Brick Studio in Kaka'ako, takes its title from the Victorian expression used to describe a long-term, intimate relationship between two women.

Written by David Mamet in a curious departure from his hard-hitting contemporary dramas such as "Oleanna" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" (both previously staged by TAG), this period comedy has Mamet trying, and failing, to sound like Oscar Wilde.

The central characters are in a waffling lesbian relationship. Anna, the elder woman, has become the disinterested mistress of a wealthy male protector. She explains that the man is certainly married, for "why else would he require a mistress if he had no wife?" As proof of their attachment, he has given Anna the expensive necklace she wears.

Claire, the younger partner, has developed an interest in a younger woman and invites her to a meeting at Anna's home. Anna makes the best she can of the situation by insisting she be allowed to spy on the tryst. When the young woman makes her offstage arrival and sees Anna wearing her mother's jewelry, all personal arrangements are jeopardized.

Mamet has written a talky parlor play for two characters and an intermittently appearing maid. There is little plot action and not much character development, but he's given it the stilted speech of what one supposes is 19th century Boston, peppering it with contemporary expressions and punctuating it with vulgarity.

This makes for a strange mixture that is both standoffish and jarring. In the TAG production directed by David Schaeffer, the characters mouth the speech without personalizing it and move the characters without getting inside them.

Betty Burdick's Anna is posturing and manipulative, arch and formal in her funereal black dress. Kristin Van Bodegraven's Claire wears virginal white and projects a shopworn naiveté. Clara Dalzell, alternating with Dusty Behner in the maid's role, wears uniformed black and white.

When the husband demands to have his wife's necklace returned, the women take a page from Lucy and Ethel's book of tricks and concoct a séance. When the necklace turns up missing, the women use each other, pull off a double reverse, and ultimately make a commitment without fully sharing their knowledge.

Ultimately, one wonders why TAG chose to produce "Boston Marriage" from a selection of better Mamet plays and whether the production might better succeed with less style and more feeling.