Elizabeth Bunch, from left, Michael Bakkensen, and Sean Lyons. Photo by Gary FountainA worthy yet inherently tricky subject produces an ambitious and unwieldy historical drama in Ether Dome.

Receiving its premiere in director Michael Wilson’s handsomely realized production at the Alley Theatre, Elizabeth Egloff’s play chronicles experiments and advances that led to the development of anesthesia in the 1840s. The chief figures are Hartford dentist Horace Wells, Boston doctor Charles Jackson and William Morton, who serves as assistant or partner to both men before piggybacking on their ideas to achieve the first successful public demonstration of the phenomenon — taking the credit and becoming, in effect, the first anesthesiologist.

With its fascinating fact-based (though embellished) story and ever-relevant themes, Ether Dome is almost always interesting — yet strangely, seldom as involving as it should be. From the first scene, as the perennially tardy Morton arrives to assist Wells at a tooth-pulling, we get the details of their lives and their virtually father-son relationship. Yet the play seldom cuts deep enough to make them, or Jackson, truly distinctive.

Perhaps it’s that we want someone to be a genuine hero. Wells is painted as a genial pipe dreamer too ineffectual to make the most of his breakthrough. Jackson is a sour malcontent still fuming that Samuel Morse got the credit for the telegraph (which Jackson claims he invented), who lets his discovery of ether similarly slip through his fingers. Morton, who has the ambition and drive to see the theory through to its realization, turns out to be an opportunistic creep — grabbing credit and rejecting his mentors, his head turned by fame.

Egloff does lots of things right, as in ending Acts 1 and 2 with contrasting demonstrations in Massachusetts General Hospital’s operating theater, the Ether Dome of the title. There, Wells’ 1845 attempt using nitrous oxide ends in humiliating failure, while Morton’s successful administration of ether in 1846 makes him a hero.

The recurring arguments about the mastodon skeleton the doctors are constructing proves an especially clever and apt means of suggesting their fossilized attitudes and personas.

Other devices, such as the comic tent show scene in which Wells discovers nitrous oxide used as entertainment, are of more questionable impact. In Act 3, the need to telescope the complex saga leads to the impression that Wells, Morton and Jackson (who actually died years apart) perished in rapid succession of tragedies. Egloff veers ever more frankly into melodrama, which works in some professional clashes. But by the time Morton collapses on a street with his wife screaming at oblivious parade revelers, somehow, it’s too much.

What’s indisputably terrific is the bang-up production directed by Wilson, who creates striking stage pictures — whether of grisly operations or Wells’ lyrical hallucinations under the influence. While Wilson can’t disguise a certain choppiness in the narrative, he brings punch to key dramatic scenes and sustains visual interest. The strong design work helps enormously, especially David C. Woolard’s elaborately detailed costumes and James Youmans’ startlingly fine settings, with that imposing Ether Dome as the central feature.

The winning cast helps compensate for the depth of character that’s sometimes missing. Michael Bakkensen’s soft-hearted, sympathetic Wells becomes scary-sad as he turns delusional. The casual charm of Sean Lyons’ thoughtless, eager Morton helps make his later viciousness endurable. Jeffrey Bean’s sour look, curt speech and knitted brow convey Jackson’s eternal frustration. John Tyson, Chris Hutchison and Todd Waite do customarily sterling character work as pompous medicos. James Belcher excels in several raffishly jovial roles. Elizabeth Bunch’s sensibly steadfast Mrs. Wells and Melissa Pritchett’s flighty, childlike Mrs. Morton neatly dispatch their assignments as loyal wives who could be right out of those earnest Warners Brothers biopics (about Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola and other historical heroes) that Ether Dome sometimes resembles.

Like the pioneering work it depicts, Ether Dome proves worthwhile despite bumpy stretches along the way.

ETHER DOME
7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays
8 p.m. Fridays
2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays
2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays
Through Oct. 9
Alley Theatre
615 Texas
$25-$55
713-220-5700