Director Patricia Finn Rapiejko’s Romeo and Juliet: A Crime Scene Investigation is meant to be a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers, paying particular attention to the motivation behind the protagonists’ untimely death.

Set in Juliet’s tomb, the play follows a slew of characters—including the Nurse, Lady Capulet, and Friar Lawrence—as they recount the events leading to the two lovers’ demise. The production tries to connect clinical depression to Romeo and Juliet’s fateful actions.

It’s a commendable effort, particularly because, as the play points out, suicide is currently the third-leading cause of death among adolescents. Good intentions, however, don’t necessarily make for good theater, and Romeo & Juliet: A Crime Scene Investigation is rife with problems.

The production’s minimalist approach burdens an inexperienced cast of young actors—most still in high school—with the daunting task of creating atmosphere. Lines meant to carry urgency are lost to stiff delivery, eliciting untimely laughs from the audience.

Casting such a young ensemble may have been part of Rapiejko’s original conceit, but the choice backfires: Some of the actors seem too concerned with remembering their lines to actually act. Shakespeare’s brilliant words get lost in the process.

Another misstep involves the presence of two Juliets—one meant to convey the girl in all her youthful innocence, the other to depict an experienced woman transformed by passion. Little seems to distinguish the characters, leaving the audience puzzled as to the purpose behind such a ploy.

But these issues pale in comparison with the play’s bigger problem: its failure to deliver on its premise. For a drama promising to illuminate a new dimension to the well-known text, this Romeo & Juliet too often feels like mere rehash—a collective mea culpa from those left behind rather than a study of the workings of the adolescent mind.

The play seems out of touch with its subject. The capriciousness of teen love is mistaken for a pathological malady, although the link between the death of the characters and clinical depression is never firmly established. Someone should tell Rapiejko that quoting Death Cab for Cutie—an indie rock band known for its bleak lyrics and adolescent appeal—hardly amounts to an insightful understanding of teenagers.

A self-proclaimed admirer of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Rapiejko nevertheless misses the mark by managing to get both teenagers and the Bard wrong. Talk about depressing.