PAY LITTLE MIND TO DIDACTIC 'GOODMAN'.

Byline: - Evan Henerson

DESIGNER BABIES and bionic athletes, genetic ethics and brain tinkering. Buzz go the buzz words. Click clack goes the keyboard of the hopefully opportunistic playwright.

Pfftt! goes the drama, as so often happens when someone tries to dramatize what would be better served as an intellectual discussion. Any intellectual discussion.

``Minding Goodman,'' the new play by screenwriter Art Brown, seems to have a lot on its, er, mind. Its allegedly smart and thoughtful characters wrestle so genuinely with the issues confronting them, and since these people are supposed to be doctors and social workers, apparently we're supposed to afford them some credibility. The likably simpler characters, meanwhile, exist to utter important messages. Brown's script serves neither party particularly well.

``Minding Goodman'' is pat and predictable, a too-tidy attempt by Brown to sandwich human relationships around the medical conundrum that seems to hold greater interest. His choice of tour guides - the bickering brain surgeon and the social services caseworker who used to be the surgeon's wife - are a hot pair of bores and are also, in the production that Brown has directed at Edgemar, woodenly acted.

``Goodman'' might have tackled the thornier but less scientifically sexy topic of what happens when a developmentally disabled husband and wife decide to become parents. And for about five seconds, that's the path Brown appears to be following. But it's a dodge. Danny and Cheryl Goodman (played by Eric Scot Woods and Darcy Halsey) have their infant son taken away immediately after the child nearly drowns in a bathtub. It's the third incident of neglect/endangerment on record for the Goodmans and social services maven Helen Henderson (Annie Abbott) is determined that there won't be a fourth.

For reasons that will become clearer later, Henderson assigns social worker Andrea Rice to the case. Andrea (Janet Gunn) visits the Goodmans, finds them to have the mental/developmental capacity of children themselves and - correctly - testifies in court that they're not fit to be parents. Later she has a crisis of conscience and convinces her ex, Dr. Stephen Mills (Christopher B. Duncan), to attempt a medical miracle on Danny. Through a surgical procedure involving the introduction of nanobots into the blood stream (don't ask me!), Danny's mental capacity will be dramatically increased. His retardation properly regulated, Andrea reasons, Danny and Cheryl may qualify to get their son back. The Goodmans agree and Danny goes under the knife.

Of course, if you alter someone's brain, you change who they are. So where precisely does Danny's ``improvement'' leave Cheryl? And is Andrea really pursuing this course of action out of purely altruistic motives or because of personal guilt over an incident in her past?

``Minding Goodman'' contains a huge amount of interplay between Andrea and Dr. Mills that might be slightly more interesting to watch if Duncan and Gunn had better chemistry (or if they were even remotely believable as a doctor and social worker). Woods (who gets a kind of character transformation) and Halsey (who doesn't) fare better. The characterizations are more finely detailed, but the script martyrs both Danny and, especially, Cheryl.

MINDING GOODMAN - Two stars

Where: Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica.

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through June 27.

Tickets: $23 to $28. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: An ethical debate brought turgidly to life.