"BFE" a funny/sad portrait of teenage isolation

Panny is a perceptive suburban teenager with eccentric relations and her own idiosyncratic view of the world.

But that is about where the similarities between the lead characters in the hit indie film "Juno" and in Julia Cho's admirable Off Broadway play "BFE" end.

Now in its West Coast debut at Richard Hugo House, "BFE" zeroes in on a 14-year-old, Korean-American misfit who is far more insecure than young Juno ever was.

Portrayed by Leah Cohen-Sapida, Panny is convinced of her ugliness, and unfavorably compares her Korean-American facial features with the WASP prettiness of her twinkie girlfriend, Nancy (Sydney Tucker).

To make matters worse, Panny has a narcissistic, agoraphobic single mother, Isabel (Roberta Furst) whose birthday present to her daughter is an offer of cosmetic facial surgery. She also has teenybopper pen pal in Korea (the very funny Maia Lee) who seems to be having a much happier adolescence than Panny is.

While wisecracking teen angst is nothing new, Cho's deft play could not be mistaken for a glib TV sitcom. Though it yields plenty of bone-wry witticisms and laughs, "BFE" offers a darker summary of modern American life from a nonconformist teen's vantage point.

Isolation and loneliness are communicable diseases in Panny's world, and nearly everyone close to her is infected. And neither she nor her peers can ever escape the specter of terrible sexual violence lurking in the shadows of this "typical" suburban landscape.

Furst's delusional mother is like a Korean-American Blanche du Bois as she wafts around in her lingerie and makes an amazed pizza delivery boy's day. (As the latter, Eric Riedmann is a hoot.)

Panny's phone buddy Hugo (Lincoln Grismer), a quirky college student, longs to connect with a girl as offbeat as he is. Panny's dutiful uncle Lefty (Sam Tsubota) hungers for a love connection too, as does Evvie (feisty Trina Griffin), a gregarious store clerk and self-help-book devotee Lefty hopes to hook up with.

Every character in "BFE" is ridiculous in one way or another. But a strength of Cho's writing is her empathy for those who stumble toward and slip away from intimacies they desperately covet — but aren't equipped to handle.

By choosing "BFE" as the first play of its new residency at Richard Hugo House, SiS Productions (best known for its serial comedy, "Sex in Seattle") is bringing us a contemporary Asian-American play of merit, that we might otherwise not see.

Some actors "BFE," under Leticia Lopez's lucid direction, lack polish. But that absence of slickness tends to serve a tale that has so many moments of social awkwardness.

Tackling a tough role, Bellevue high-school student Cohen-Sapida seems touchingly genuine here. The show also benefits from a spare, eerie score by composer Byron Au Yong, and a low-key yet entirely creepy turn by Scott Plusquellec, as the boogeyman of every teenage girl's nightmares.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com