Two things stand out in "The Music of Dolphins," a story of a feral child reintroduced to human contact — projected film images and jarringly effective dolphin behaviors produced by Nina Buck in the central role of 12-year-old Mila.

It's a world premiere for the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, with a script adapted by Tanya Palmer from the book by Karen Hesse.

H. Bart McGeehon's stark and simple set represents Mila's room, with white walls and industrial props suggesting something between a medical examining room and a prison cell. Videos of sea images are projected onto those walls, alternating with television news clips, and include an effective plunge into a swimming pool that lets the audience experience the dive.

HTY company actor Buck is equally successful in the early scenes, emitting shrill dolphin cries, recreating fish-like swimming movements with arms tightly held against her sides and showing dolphin affection with full-body contact for her favored ones.

But the more Mila learns about humans, the more she yearns to return to the isolated island where a plane crash left her to be raised by dolphins.

The script accelerates the action to make it fit a 60-minute playing time, cutting or combining characters, and giving only a glancing touch to the insights revealed by alien or inter-species contact. Mila finds human emotions to be contradictory and human violence to be abhorrent. She longs for the loving simplicity of swimming with her family pod.

There is little character development in the other roles.

Maile Holck plays a doctor expert in dealing with feral children who avoids Mila's emotional turmoil. Like many adults in children's books, she's concerned primarily with order and routine and oblivious to real issues.

Junior Tesoro plays double roles. As the doctor's assistant, he is supportive of Mila, sitting up with her at night and giving her tapes of music and animal sounds to hold off her loneliness. As the doctor's young son, he transforms from a sullen mall rat into Mila's confidant and supporter.

The production also includes some effective choreography by Janice Lancaster, in which the actors become sea creatures, bobbing and swimming below the waves — assisted in the transformation by shadows and the projections designed by Adam Larsen.

Fans of local news will enjoy the recorded clips featuring Kim Gennaula and Guy Hagi that give the story the appearance of actual fact.

But, for the most part, the production is the story of a lost girl looking for unconditional love. Recommended by HTY for children ages 8 and above, it will be most easily liked by romantic pre-teens.