It's not hard to sympathize with Clay, the protagonist of Matt Pelfrey's An Impending Rupture of the Belly. Anyone who has stepped in doggie poo on the sidewalk and cursed the irresponsible owner or the homeowner whose rose garden or raised planter has been claimed by the neighbor's cats as their own outdoor kitty litter can surely understand his outrage when a neighbor lets his dog dump his daily load on his finely manicured lawn. Yet under director Damaso Rodriquez, this play in its world premiere at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre in Pasadena, asks us to believe the extremes Clay goes to and his wife's betrayal are the stuff of real life.

This might have worked better as black comedy (which some local critics have seen and praised it as), but the tone is unrelentingly grim. Clay worries about bombs, the bird flu, and earthquakes, and is traumatized by his own little 9/11 — not the one in New York and at the Pentagon, but a more recent auto accident. Clay (Eric Pargac) is definitely a paranoid and a high functioning one. His pregnant wife (Aubrey Saverino) is the sensible one and one can't help but wonder why she married him, but Pelfrey doesn't delve into that psychological aspect of this drama. Her pregnancy is supposedly what pushes Clay into protective overdrive, but that's not totally convincing any more than their relationship.

I am sure there are dog owners who feel it their privilege to have their dog poop where they please as Doug (Troy Metcalf) does and perhaps even with a little bit of machismo bullying behind it. I've seen enough dog poop left littering the walkways of even the nicest neighborhoods. I guess us lesser beings are expected to pick up. One ponders whether someone would have been driven to such extremes by simple dog doo and territorialism but there is the case of Jameson Parker, most famous for the TV series Simon & Simon. I'm not totally clear on the details, but it involved a gunshot wound and Parker leaving Los Angeles.

Yet as this play winds down into disaster for Clay, there hardly seems to be a clear point to it and the twists and lies and why those lies are told are not convincingly supported. The cast digs in and earnestly pushes this tragedy to its bitter end, but all their effort seems to be wasted. The play, produced by the Furious Theatre Company, continues until June 9.