Fringe benefits Duplex, Forget Herostratus! BY LIZA WEISSTUCH

Listen closely. There’s that hum again, that tormented whine of angst pitched in A major — a major confusion, that is. Yes, the characters in Duplex (at the Boston Center for the Arts through June 11), a world-premiere musical by Alarm Clock Theatre Company, are confused — about relationships, about careers, about their future. They’re so confused, they’re driven to impulsive acts of desperation. If you think this sounds like your average Gen-X movie, hipster novel, or indie-rock — or even metal — love song, you’re right. But Alarm Clock, which was founded in 2002, constructs Duplex on a solid foundation, giving promise of better when composer Peter Fernandez applies his talents (he wrote the book, music, and lyrics) to less well-trampled narrative terrain.

Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer-winning Rent is spun around a landlord out to evict the artists in his building in order to develop the property. Duplex is more rent-controlled. The tenants in Larson’s East Village rewrite of La bohème have serious, sometimes life-threatening problems; here the difficulties derive from self-involvement. Perky go-getter Katie Jane (Amanda Meehan) and scruffy, juvenile Bobby (Joseph Pelletier) are twentysomethings who shack up together with illusions of cohabitation bliss. They rent a Somerville apartment from Gordon (Tim Douglas) and Suzanne (Sally Dennis), thirtysomethings who’ve been married for five years and are experiencing connubial complications. Tossed in as the Greek Chorus are a busybody elderly couple, fixtures in the neighborhood, who editorialize about the goings-on and explain how modern society has made relating a thorny exercise.

By juxtaposing the younger couple and their rose-tinted notions of relationship against a pair grappling with the reality of marriage, Fernandez creates a ripe set-up. And he has on his side Luke Dennis’s direction and Josh Tobin’s set, which places the pairs’ living quarters side by side so that both households can be seen at once.

But good theater shows, not tells. So when Bobby exclaims "Oh my God! I’m an adult" in an early scene, any mystery as to where this musical is headed is dissipated. Feeling alienated from their industrious, overachieving mates, Bobby and Suzanne develop an awkward interest in each other, but its basis is flimsy. What starts out piquing your curiosity devolves into a musical sequence of mood swings and regret that feels borrowed from everyone from Larson and Patrick Marber to John Irving to Nick Hornby to Bright Eyes to The OC’s writing team.

Despite the derivative plot and the prolonged spells of mawkishness, Fernandez proves a competent composer, peppering his lyrics with Cole Porter–esque humor and working in a range of styles. Swinging from upbeat rock numbers to impassioned ballads to calypso to traditional Broadway, and well performed by a four-piece outfit, the score supplies the cast members with plenty of material to flex their vocal muscles, and Dennis is particularly good as Suzanne, who’s stuck in the virtual-reality worlds she designs for video games. (If the symbolism isn’t obvious, her duet with Bobby, "Virtual World/Never Again," spells it out.)

While Somerville couples try to forget past mistakes and figure out the future, the Theatre Cooperative, in Somerville, reaches into the past to examine the importance of memory. Forget Herostratus! (through June 11) is by Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin, whose works were seldom performed during the Communist era in which he wrote. Vladimir Zelevinsky has adapted Herostratus, and he directs it with an unsteady hand.

It’s 356 BC, and Herostratus (a historical figure, weakly played by Dan Cozzens) is in prison for burning down the legendary Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. He’s portrayed as a willowy poet with a shrewd business sense and firm convictions about how history misconstrues reality. In his assessment, his act will immortalize his name (and make high-standing women fall to their knees) while obliterating the identities of the temple’s architects and builders. It’s Gorin’s oblique censure of Communism. Herostratus writes a memoir that becomes a bestseller on the scrolls market. Meanwhile, the governor and the head judge are determined to see justice served and ensure that history doesn’t write his name in lights. They take extreme measures to quash his popularity.

Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, and the everyday nobodies who engross society are apt to come to mind. But to underscore the connection, Kortney Adams serves as the Chorus, an envoy from today. She claims she’s there to observe, but her inevitable involvement drags what might have been a sophisticated play down to an elementary level where it becomes forgettable.