Alan Ayckbourn's 1998 farce about love between humans and androids might be hilarious and touching. It might be a dramatic commentary on the future. It might be a good play.

It might be all these things, but we've yet to find out.

Directed by Bill Ogilvie, it's a numbing two hours filled with stilted performances, unconvincing characters and a noticeable lack of laughter. It even fails to be consistently bad, since Act Two has one good short scene.

Here, in an unmistakable reference to the restaurant scene in "When Harry Met Sally," the male lead in "Comic Potential" crawls under the table to empty the female android's waste container. When he finds the right button, she sighs with pleasure and relief as stunned witnesses look on.

Except for that single moment, one amuses oneself with automated word play to survive the dialogue doldrums. His hard drive's been corrupted. The dog must have been chewing on her floppy disk. Or they're two battery packs short of being fully charged.

Gus Downes works hard at being human in the central role of Adam Trainsmith, a young writer whose uncle owns the television company that uses robotic actors. He's a romantic idealist of the Pygmalion persuasion, dreaming of turning a lovely machine into a real woman.

The object of his affection is a beautiful android named Jacie Triplethree from her identification numbers. Leslie Bartels gives the role a warm R2D2 reading and has a charming habit of falling into dialogue and accents of previous characters in her memory bank.

Unfortunately, neither is individually convincing, nor can they together strike the necessary spark that would make them a believable couple.

Act One is a laborious build up to their elopement. In Act Two they temporarily elude their pursuers and come to their inevitable end, which provides more relief than poignancy.

Richard Aadland sloshes around as a stereotyped alcoholic, talentless director and Richard Farmer plays the wheel-chaired station owner with "Endgame" flavor.

Melinda Maltby and Erin Michewicz play lesbian TV technicians and Victoria Gail-White appears as a prostitute with a Carmen Miranda accent.

Ayckbourn is a prolific and much-produced playwright who gave us "How The Other Half Loves" and "Absurd Person Singular."

While he has his finger on the pulse of contemporary urban anxieties, "Comic Potential" is not one of his best works.

Perhaps creative direction and inspired performances could help us overlook the play's derivative situations and weak plotting. But the failure in the Manoa Valley production must be chalked up to operator error.