STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Breaker Morant’, ‘Lucy’s Play’ in Rep at Cal State Long Beach : Comedy: New company presents a comic parable about a Christian’s protest against Roman brutality.

CalRep, a new professional company at Cal State Long Beach, chose to open with John Clifford’s “Lucy’s Play,” a production that stumbles over misplaced focus.

Clifford’s comedy with serious intentions takes place in Syracuse in AD 386 and recounts the story of Lucy, who gouged out her eyes as a Christian protest against Roman brutality and decadence. She was made a saint. The playwright gives the legend an interesting twist. In his eye, Lucy didn’t do the deed at all, only pretended to. That bit of public relations gimmickry sets up Clifford’s premise that the Christian movement in the 4th Century had become as debased as the Roman Establishment.

Lucy’s lover, Lucius, back from Christian battlefields, describes horrors of war that sound familiar to 20th-Century ears, and indeed the play becomes a parable for our own time and our own wars and interventions in the affairs of our dependents.

Framed as a fable in its simplistic story-theater treatment, the actors greeting the audience at the beginning with “Welcome to our humble stage, our warehouse of dreams,” “Lucy’s Play” suffers from the additional cuteness of Joanne Gordon’s direction and Herbert Camburn’s setting. The writing cries out for a more earnest tone, a darker intent in the staging. Clifford’s message and humor might be able to stand on their own without these silly trimmings.

With the exception of a charming performance by Patricia Boyette as Lucy and a sincere reading by John Ross Clark as a secretary with pretensions to power who finds his place in the burgeoning Christian hierarchy, the actors do little more than trill their lines, as if they’re doing a children’s play.

It isn’t easy to find a solid core in the middle of the meringue.

At 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach; Saturday, also Nov. 9, 10, 18, 30, Dec. 1, 2, 9, 14, 15 at 8 p.m.; matinees Nov. 29 and Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $8 to $12; (213) 985-5526.