The Army Community Theatre's production of "An Almost Holy Picture" is a wonderful opportunity for Richard Pellett to shine in a one-man Readers Theater performance. Pellett does shine, but one also wishes he had been given a more conclusive script.

The play by Heather McDonald, adapted and directed by Vanita Rae Smith, focuses on a former priest struggling with his view of God. That view is shaped by three experiences.

The first occurred at age 9, slogging through a cranberry bog behind his father, when he heard a voice say, "Follow me." The second happened years later when a bus accident drowned nine children under his care. The last — and the real substance of the play — follows the birth of his daughter, Ariel.

The baby girl was born with a rare condition that covered her with thick golden hair, a challenge to an aged father with a spectacular love for his daughter and a consuming drive to protect her from an unfeeling world.

It ran on Broadway in 2002 starring Kevin Bacon and was met with a mixture of awards and poor reviews. ACT's Fort Shafter reading plays like a puzzle looking for a resolution.

The playwright offers us a host of clues. Each of the play's four sections has its own name: "The Grace of Daily Obligation," "The Garden in Winter." References to American Indian tribes repeatedly suggest that we are "measured by what we hold on to," but are "nourished by what we give away." Religious platitudes introduced by the repeated phrase "the bishop says," open the way to questioning via objective experience.

Minor characters seem significant. There's an American Indian woman, the operator of an isolated filling station and his wild son with an instinct for photography. The character's anthropologist wife takes on the persona of every character she plays in summer community theater productions.

But as we repeatedly ask ourselves for the meaning in the storytelling, all clues point back toward the narrator, Samuel Gentle, for 20 years the gardener at a Catholic cathedral.

Gentle's view of God is wrapped up in his view of himself. His view of himself is defined by his loss. And his loss is that he has separated himself from his daughter in a misguided effort to protect her.

Pellett's reading gives the play a great deal of texture and depth. He shows us a sensitive, questioning, loving man tormented by an overly zealous quest for meaning despite the natural solace offered by the rebirth cycles of his garden.

But one can't help suspect that Gentle's introspection blinds him to uncomplicated joys and that his questioning brings with it the sin of self-centered indulgence. Just as the play reaches that significant turning point, it ends. But the ending suggests hope that Gentle can begin to repair the damage he has inadvertently caused and that his life and his view of God can ultimately be salvaged.