The lights go down at Denver Center Theatre Company, and the kids start loudly shushing one another, taking with glee their roles in the play. They are there to see The Miracle Worker, the second installment in theater targeted to middle-schoolers and families, initiated by Artistic Director Kent Thompson.

It's a great idea to pull in young people with material that could actually stimulate their minds before they're too jaded. The Miracle Worker, despite fine performances, is not the piece that's going to do the trick.

Written a half-century ago by William Gibson, who died last week, the play depicts just a few weeks in the lives of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Played with impressive focus by Daria LeGrand, Helen is a young hellion, tormenting her elegant Southern parents who, in turn, spoil her rotten. In desperation, they hire a tutor, the 20-year-old Sullivan, who tries to find a way to pierce Helen's blind and deaf isolation to teach her discipline and, the greater challenge, language.

It's an exciting event in a powerful life story, but The Miracle Worker has the worst qualities of the period in which it was written. It feels very much like the teleplay it began as, laden with melodrama and lukewarm humor. Its events become repetitious, and its weakest points can be heard in the sounds of squirming pre-teens.

Art Manke directs it with fine performances but doesn't particularly re-energize the story, nor does he remedy the overblown psychodrama of Annie hearing voices from her past, tortured by the death of her young brother.

As Annie, Kate Hurster exhibits a steel spine and wry attitude, going woman-to-girl with LeGrand in the very physical power struggle between teacher and pupil. Those carefully staged scenes are the show's finest moments, escaping the anachronisms of the script, making silence this play's most effective communication.

John Hutton plays Helen's irascible, authoritarian father, while Rachel Fowler gives a kindly performance as the loving mother and Leigh Miller makes Helen's older brother a mischievous roue.

But if you're going to grab middle-schoolers, why not do it with something that makes them understand theater is of their time as well as the past? Thompson has done a fantastic job of expanding the theater company's new play program. Now it's time to commission something for this underserved audience.

The Miracle Worker

* Grade: B-

* When and where: Through Dec. 20 in the Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex

* Cost: $11 to $51

* Information: 303-893-4100