There are sufficient ambiguities in Joe Penhall's "Blue/Orange" without adding to them. The production directed by David Farmer for The Actors' Group sometimes feels like a juggler has thrown an armful of balls into the air and then walked away.

Penhall's play is set in a contemporary British mental hospital, where a young black man claiming to be the son of former Uganda president Idi Amin becomes the pawn in a power struggle between two treating psychiatrists.

Locked into a personal and professional debate, the action plays out as a series of arguments, to which patient care takes a back seat. The younger doctor believes the boy to be schizophrenic and needing more treatment, the elder advocates for an early release with continued medication. Each charges the other of mistreatment.

Billed as a comedy/drama, the audience is unsure about the funny parts in this debate, probably because the cast and director seem equally uncertain. There are some absurd guffaws, but the action lacks the deft blend of absurd tragedy that so often works well in "MASH," "Scrubs," or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

The dialogue also omits British accents but retains British references. So it's a minor jolt when an actor speaking standard American English uses "quid" as a monetary value.

But the biggest puzzle piece introduced by director Farmer is his decision to select a young, attractive black woman to play the role of the elder doctor. Casting blind to color and gender can have consequences that affect the tone of the play. In "Blue/Orange" it significantly alters the central conflict.

The script references the doctors' taking in a soccer match. This buddy activity begins to look like a date in the TAG version. The script suggests the elder doctor may be exploiting or discriminating against the young patient by dismissing him as an example of "black psychosis" after only one meeting. The TAG casting suggests his early discharge could be a racial bias in his favor.

Jeanne Wynne Herring is a late addition to the cast as the elder psychiatrist and carried a script in the opening night performance. Thomas Smith is the high-strung younger doctor.

As the patient, high school senior London Stanton shows a great deal of performance potential and character control. But the production downplays the character's pathology and the possible consequences of his premature release.

The schizophrenia diagnosis turns on his perception that the oranges on the break room table are colored blue. We miss indications of depression or anxiety that might add weight to his predicament.

Ultimately, the production clouds the action when it should clarify it.