"Becky's New Car," which opens the Insight Theatre Company season, feels like a festival play. That's good: It's fresh and modern. That's not so good: It still needs a good hard edit.

Playwright Steven Dietz seems to be aiming toward a romantic comedy, and he has the comedy down. His lively script about a woman in transition, deftly played by Susie Wall, is full of sharp, well-placed observations and likable characters. He opens the door to romance, too.

Maybe Dietz seems a little embarrassed to be caught at such a quaint genre (or at least, too close to it for his comfort). That could explain why he keeps breaking the "fourth wall," demanding more audience participation than a night at the Second City. The actors also frequently talk to us, and to the guy in the lighting booth, as if to make sure we won't forget we're at the theater.

Those details remind us that we're at a modern play, one in which the author rejects the trammels of a genre that, to be honest, are extremely familiar. It's OK to play around with them.

But when he betrays the fundamental convention of romantic comedy — a good resolution — Dietz also betrays his characters. Director Tlaloc Rivas maintains a bright mood, but he can't get rid of the unease that shadows the ending.

Wall plays Becky, a middle-aged woman in a long, comfortably dull marriage to a roofer (Jerry Russo). They have one son, a graduate student who shows no signs of growing up, and Becky works very hard at her desk job at an auto dealership. When a shy, widowed multimillionaire (John Contini) comes in to buy 'some cars" — nine of them, on the spur of the moment! — he assumes that Becky is widowed, too. She doesn't correct him.

Russo and Contini deliver two appealing men, one strong and dependable, the other sweetly romantic, both caring and considerate. You can see why Wall's character is torn, and why she gives in to something she knows is wrong. Most stories about women in Becky's position portray them as vixens or as victims, but Dietz doesn't give guilt-stricken Becky such simple alternatives.

Wall lets us see Becky's excitement and self-loathing, often in the same gesture: dashing around the stage like a dervish, soliciting (from the audience) the advice she wants to hear, clutching a bottle of water as though it were an anchor in the suddenly choppy seas of her placid life. It's a smart piece of work.

But in the end, Dietz strands her and both men. Their situation is a mess, which is no doubt true to real life. But as the playwright has taken pains to remind us, and as we know anyway, "Becky's New Car" isn't real life. We're at the theater, a place where stories come to an end.

'Becky's New Car'

Insight Theatre Company

When • Through June 19

Where • Heagney Theatre at Nerinx Hall, 530 East Lockwood Avenue

How much • $25-$30; $20 for senior rush tickets, $10 for student rush

More info • 314-556-1293; insighttheatrecompany.com