Joe Pintauro’s Beside Herself, currently playing at the 6th@Penn Theatre as part of their “off-nights” series, is about a lonely soul taking a look back at her sad, pathetic life and wishing she had another opportunity to make it better.

This drama is a one-dimensional portrayal of a squandered life. The principal character, Mary (Jeanette Horn), looks at herself through three different stages in her life (age 10, 16, and 35, approximately) by way of three apparitions who are simply younger versions of her. It is an awkward portrayal and lends itself to a bit of confusion before the audience is able to discern the difference between the spirit world and the human world.

The three spirit-characters are not able to see a future beyond the age they are portraying. As they begin conversing with Mary, the audience must sort out these limitations, and in a play that’s only 70-minutes long, that’s asking a lot.

Mary’s interaction with humans is limited to two UPS employees. The first one, Harry (Anthony Gioffre), is retiring and making the rounds to say a fond farewell to customers on his route. Even though the poor man’s wife is dying and he has to pull the plug — having just received a court order — Mary somehow sees this as an opportunity to pounce on him, offering him freshly baked pie as bait. Their conversation is unsentimental, almost brutal, and leads to nothing.

Mary has better luck with his replacement, Augie-Jake (Robert Borzych). Cheered on by the apparitions from the past, she offers this young, confused, injured soul a slice of freshly baked pie. Augie-Jake takes the bait and even returns for another visit, when Mary steals a kiss from him with the help of one of the apparitions.

Between the UPS visits, the child apparition, Alexandra (Catie Marron), says child-like, eager-to-please things while the pubescent version of Mary, Skidie (Shannon Diana), always seen carrying a pad and pencil, recites stories she has written about her observations. The prime-of-life apparition, Violet (Laurie Lehmann-Gray) just seems to talk about degrees of horniness and seduction, egging Mary to pounce upon the quite youthful, but quirky and troubled, Augie-Jake.

It appears our heroine married Lionel, the brother of a man she really loved, lost both her children and abandoned her husband while he suffered from a debilitating illness. She is now desperate to do something that will validate her life, and at least one of the apparitions seems to think getting a young piece of ass will do the trick.

Pintauro’s half-crazed principal character is not portrayed half as well as Tennessee William’s Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, but it has the same ingredients — a sexually starved matron looking for happiness in a young, virile man. Beside Herself fails to offer a remedy to a failed life; it simply allows Mary’s other selves to encourage her to commit the same kinds of insipid mistakes she’s made in the past. Mary’s decision to pursue this young man is simply a recipe for failure, even if Augie-Jake does share her duck roast and his eyes twinkle momentarily before her artificial Xmas tree.

The imagery of constant road kill near Mary’s island home is overdone and melodramatic; especially the dying-bear dream sequence. Mary seems to learn nothing from watching the re-runs of her younger selves; she’s ready and willing to make yet another mistake in her pathetic life history.

Bernard Beldan’s direction seemed clumpish, pitting one actor against another with little space to define the human characters from the spirit world of the past.

Although competently acted, this production seems more appropriate to traditional “off-nights” than other, more successful, shows recently produced at Sixth@Penn.

Beside Herself runs through Aug. 20 at Sixth@Penn Theatre. Call for tickets at (619) 688-9210.