The central theme of disturbed genius in "Like a Bird" has been dramatically explored in a wide range of works, from "Amadeus" to "Silence of the Lambs."

The new play by Edward Earl Pickard, produced by The Lizard Loft at The ARTS at Marks Garage, offers some new images but fails to find a distinct point of view or explore new depths of the problem.

The play exists in a void in time and space, although the program notes establish it's the 1950s and the Mississippi State Institution for the Insane. It plays much like an early attempt at stark realism, suggesting Ibsen's "Ghosts."

Walter has asked his wife, Sybil, played by Roxanne Fay like she's desperately searching for a subtext, to commit him for treatment. It falls to Sybil to articulate the dilemma raised by the psychiatrist in "Equus": Should Walter be delivered from his madness at the cost of destroying his artistic passion?

Unfortunately, the central character of Walter lacks the irresponsible spontaneity of Mozart or the psychopathic intensity of Hannibal Lecter. Although he dips his toe into both those character precedents, it comes back scarcely wet.

Played by Gerald Altwies, Walter is simply pretentiously puffed up and given to intermittent violence, like an over-educated dilettante after too many vodka shots, displaying an inflated vocabulary. Even his violence is half-hearted and without real threat.

Walter chokes his psychiatrist — played with an untrustworthy smirk by Steve Katz — and head-butts him in the groin. Learning that Sybil is pregnant with their third child, Walter punches her repeatedly in the abdomen.

At the end of her rope, Sybil consents to his treatment. Later, observing its effects, she releases him to be free, "Like A Bird."

There are some glimmers of character insight in the dialogue. Walter characterizes the boys' school with horses he attended with his elder brother as "Cavalry for him. Calvary for me." Claiming he uses alcohol only to cope with the corps of "walking dead" that surrounds him, he's stymied by the question, "Do you still drink when there are no fools around?" His treatment erases his "footprints from the sand."

But too much of the action is built around two-character scenes and too much of the dialogue consists of questioning and suggestive repetition of the other character's last phrase. Exposition is ham-handed. Walter's torment by his unseen mother's voice is suggestively crackpot Freudian.

Casey Fern plays a hospital orderly whose sole duty, it seems, is to burst into the room whenever Walter gets enraged, only to be sent away in preparation for another outburst. Walter's medical treatment is unspecified but suggests a partial lobotomy performed in the hallway outside his room without benefit of anesthetic.

And despite its 1950s Mississippi setting, it seems that Sybil could simply retract her permission for repeated treatment without resorting to knotting together bed sheets for Walter's escape out the window.

The production ends with an interesting visual effect as lighting designer Janine Myers projects images of pelicans in flight against the stark hospital walls to suggest Walter's imaginative art.

But the final assessment is that "Like A Bird" paints a central character that only the playwright could love.