ALL `MIXED' UP IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

JAKE GONZALEZ, a passionate but failed cultural anthropologist walks into the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and demands the bones of his ``sister,'' the 9,000-year-old remains of La Brea Woman, the only human being found in the La Brea Tar Pits. Jake wants to give his ancestor a proper burial. By blood, he is one-sixteenth Chumash.

Fortunately, for plot purposes of Cherylene Lee's play ``Mixed Messages,'' having its premiere at East West Players, Jake makes his demand of the one person least prepared to handle it: Wai Lin-Lawson, a one-year post-doctoral research associate who happens to be cleaning out an office. Because Wai, who studies ancient dental patterns, never kicks Jake's gadflyish request upstairs, ``Mixed Messages'' can go forward.

Wai is herself of mixed descent - the daughter of a Chinese mother and a British father. Jake's got a lot of different strains kicking around in his DNA. And, of course, La Brea Woman's genealogy is a T-Rex-size question mark. If she's proven to have Chumash ancestry, then Jake's claim is a heck of a lot more problematic - especially if his ancestral connection can also be validated. No sure thing.

In between scenes, a number of teenage voices are heard identifying and discussing their own racial identities. Lee, who conducted surveys among high-school students while researching her play, discovered that a lot of Angelenos come from mixed heritage. The point is perhaps driven home with a bit too much force. After the second or third ghostly, ``My mother is black, my father is Chinese,'' things feel redundant. OK, so we're all, to some extent, mutts. And sometimes mutthood can be difficult.

Take away all those voices, a couple of extraneous characters and a really silly second-act opening montage from director Jon Lawrence Rivera's production, and I wonder if Lee doesn't have a more taut and infinitely more compelling play. Mia Riverton (who plays Wai) and Luis Villalta (Jake) are engaging actors (Villalta more so than Riverton). Scenes with assorted parents, attorneys and tribal councilmen unnecessarily clutter a play that could easily run one act and 90 minutes.

Wai and Jake are the only characters with names. Wai's mom (played by Natsuko Ohama) is about to marry a Japanese man several years her junior. Her dad (Walter Beery) is rather stoic about the problems his daughter faces. The only reason they come into play is because Wai, after she notices some similarities between her own facial structure and La Brea Woman's skull, needs to measure her folks' heads to potentially advance her theory.

It may not do to overstrain one's gray matter wondering why a low-level office paper pusher like Wai would be representing a major institution on a debate over who gets jurisdiction over important historical artifacts. But contrivances and convenience are a rather large part of ``Mixed Messages.'' If the argument were weightier, maybe side distractions would be easier to overlook. Nor does it help that Riverton makes Wai such a party-line-spouting lightweight from the get go. You don't want her to lose necessarily so much as to grow up.

What then is the message of ``Mixed Messages''? How about, ``Be careful who you get to watch your bones''?

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

MIXED MESSAGES - Two and one half stars

Where: East West Players, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 10.

Tickets: $28 to $33. [phone], Ext. 20, or www.eastwestplayers.org.

In a nutshell: Compelling idea marred by a silly plot.

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Luis Villalta and Mia Riverton star in the East West Players production of ``Mixed Messages.''