Structurally, Michele Lowe's Inana is a fairly traditional play. There are realistic, contemporary scenes played by characters living in the real world, interspersed with flashbacks to the recent past.

Thematically, though, Lowe's play is tragically original. Original because it portrays a number of Iraqis who are educated, worldly and nuanced. Tragic because that shouldn't be original. In this country, it is.

Lowe's characters are fanatics, but they are zealots of the intellect. Darius is a museum director in Mosul on the eve of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He fears for his antiquities and is desperate to protect one in particular. (Ironically, the British Museum, owner of so many objects looted from the Middle East, is seen as protector.) We meet him in a musty London hotel room, where he is ineptly attempting to connect with his bride, Shali. She stands immobile in the bathroom, and it quickly becomes clear that this was an arranged marriage and that she is perhaps more religious than he is.

What unfolds is part suspense tale (one that shows its hand too often) and part romance, as Darius and Shali go through a painful warming-up period.

Lowe, working with director Michael Pressman, takes us from London to the recent past in Iraq and back again, on a set by Vicki Smith that bookends the prosaic motel room with translucent panels decorated in Arabic patterns.

Piter Marek makes a hero for the proudly nerdy as Darius, a geeky, obsessive scientist who is profoundly decent and aware of his own humanity, particularly in flashbacks with his first wife, the more secular Hama (Reema Zaman). His relationships develop further with his museum assistant (Alok Tewari) and his close friend, Abdel-Hakim, played by Laith Nakli as a defiant bookstore owner who finds Tehran to be a more open environment than his current one. In an unshowy performance, Nakli builds a man who quietly brings about the play's most penetrating moment.

Equally impressive is Nasser Faris as an artist who finds expression (and income) in the forging of relics. Faris brings a complex portrait to life, a man with sly humor, questionable business practices and an unflinching love of family.

All of these exist to build the tensions between Darius and Shali. Mahira Kakkar gives Shali an innocence that would be unbelievable were it not for her cloistered life, and an innate intelligence that contrasts nicely with it. "I'm only as smart as you want me to be," she tells her husband, and ardently defends the Saddam propaganda she's been fed, but a surprising strength reveals itself at selected moments. Slowly, the two try to find one another and their place in a world that can't see them.

Inana

* Grade: B+

* When and where: Through Feb. 28 in the Ricketson Theatre of the Denver Performing Arts Complex

* Cost: $25 and up

* Information: 303-893-4100 or denvercenter.org