Theatre Alliance’s Haroun and the Sea Of Stories takes us on a diverting trip where the imagination of a young girl and her father are our guide. The result is an overly whimsical and inconsistent treatment of a lyrical but sometimes impeneterable script.

The setup for the play, now being staged at H Street Playhouse, is simple enough – storyteller Rashid’s wife Soraya leaves him for a more practical suitor, rendering him too sad to weave his tall tales. His daughter, Haroun, is left devastated but determined to help her father, and journeys to the mythical sea of stories to discover the source of his ills. She meets many a wacky character along the way, but the twists and turns of her journey aren’t always completely comprehensible to the viewer.

The play, scripted by Salman Rushdie, has some interesting mythical roots, with its emphasis on the power of names, and the unique, imaginative creatures which populate its world. Unfortunately, in this version, everything feels just a little too silly, and a little too protracted. Theatre Alliance has some creative ideas for staging — a magical trip on the back of a bird, for example, is treated like a colorful, cacophonous bus excursion, set to pulsing music — but the scene just goes on way too long. The play seems to alternately take itself seriously (there are some genuine moments of emotion between the divided family which truly manage to move) and later descend into goofiness, reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss tale, or perhaps one of the sing-song parable scenes from Godspell.