Think back to the days of high school, when hormones raged and everything was oh so serious, from pimples to study hall to learning how to kiss like an adult.

It was a time, for so many of us, full of the angst that is peculiar to teenagers, a time of uncertainty and wonder.

That’s the setting for "Bare: A Pop Opera," which opened over the weekend at Soulstice Theatre under the direction of Matthew Northey.

There is tremendous potential in the story of two gay boys in a Catholic boarding school. Jason (Shane Skinner) is inside the closet, holding onto the doorknob to keep it shut. His boyfriend, Peter (Doug Clemons) is outside, pulling on the same doorknob, trying to crack the door open.

The boys are surrounded by the expected clan: the easy girl, the girl who thinks she’s too fat, the kindly priest, the nun with the biting sense of humor, the ditzy blonde and assorted other kids who are both having fun and suffering through life.

The kids in this cast have all the earnestness that you would expect from young people let loose on a stage with a very difficult and complex score to sing. They all worked hard to make us believe in the story they were telling.

The problem may be that they, like any high school kid, took themselves too seriously.

There is hardly any dialogue in this play. There are, however, 36 songs. And they are incredibly uneven. Some have some bite and emotion. A lot of them are cliches and border on absolutely trite.

Watching this reminded me of nothing so much as an overwrought episode of "Glee" where everyone danced and sang around whatever the crushing issue of the day was.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty with this production was an inability to hear all the singers. Soulstice is a small space, but frequently lyrics were lost before they got to where I was sitting. In a play with nothing to move the story forward except lyrics, this was a crushing problem.

In addition there was such a predictability about the play that nothing this company could have done would have overcome it.

We alternated between tender love scenes with the two boys holding hands and facing each other, followed by a group sing and dance, followed by the two boys, followed by ... well, you get the idea. 

The story itself might well have come out of a writing class for high school juniors.

The boys are conflicted. There is a girl who loves one of the boys. There are students who know the secret. There is a mother either blissfully unaware of her son’s orientation or refusing to face the reality. There is a tough guy scholarship to Notre Dame, threatened by this union.

The play is almost two and half hours long. It would have been much smoother and understandable if someone had taken a red pencil to at least half an hour of the script. There was just too much extraneous junk.

I can't begin to count the number of times we were forced to watch Jason and Peter hold hands and face each other in the middle of the stage, singing their little heads off. The first time, it was tender. By the time it moved into double figures, it seemed well worn. 

Nobody should blame this cast or crew for the failings of the play itself. These kids had lots of energy, and both Kathryn Hausman and Haley San Filippo stood out for the clarity and emotion of their singing and their ability to fully inhabit their characters.

But the whole evening seemed like something we, as a society, has moved well past.

Being gay in America just doesn’t seem like that big a deal anymore. I mean hardly anyone cares anymore, except for the wacko fringe element of society. Like high schoolers always do, this play makes a bigger deal out of this conflict than it deserves.

I suppose if I was a closeted 16-year-old boy, this play might resonate and have some meaning for me. But I’m not. And it doesn’t.

"Bare: A Pop Opera" runs through March 1 and information on showtimes and tickets is available here.