Corey Rieger is the nice young man David and Tressa Glover is the sleepless Frankie in "Dreams for an Insomniac." Click photo for larger image. "Dream for an Insomniac" Where: Thank You, Felix Productions at La Prima Espresso, 811 Liberty Ave., Downtown. When: Through Feb. 27, Thurs.-Sun. 8 p.m. (no late seating). Tickets: $15; 412-394-3353.

"Cinematic" is one of those adjectives which, applied to a stage show, cuts both ways.

"Dream for an Insomniac," a 100-minute, banter-full portrait of a group of cute 20-somethings, is a case in point. From its dozen episodic scenes and focus on atmosphere and character rather than conflict, you might be able to guess it's adapted from a movie, specifically Tiffanie DeBartolo's 1996 movie of the same name.

Adaptor/director Adam Kukic pays further homage to the screen original by providing a kind of contiguous storyboard, a collage of still pictures projected as bridges between scenes, showing action mentioned in the play but not staged. In this way, "Dream" may seek to transcend the limits of stage or screen for something in between.

This device also gives the actors time to change costume, but it is more than just a convenience. The photos' casual documentary feel matches that of the play, which depends on intimate snapshot naturalism.

In establishing the right atmosphere, the performance space is key -- La Prima Espresso at 811 Liberty Ave. The play is set in Cafe Blue Eyes, just such a Pittsburgh cafe, where Sinatra provides the soundtrack and album cover decoration, so this intimate space becomes an important player. We're right there with the characters, twisting to watch them enter or head back behind the counter to work.

The story is minimal: Frankie has man trouble and also trouble sleeping (related troubles, obviously) and friend Allison, gay cousin Rob, Rob's guy B.J. and even Uncle Leo all hope to get her fixed up.

The premise is a little forced and it doesn't help that when nice young David applies for a job at Leo's cafe, we know immediately that he's the one for Frankie. No matter: the predictability of the story leaves us free to savor the intimacy of atmosphere and character.

There's nothing easy about acting within a couple of feet of your audience, but the company is nicely at home. Tressa Glover's Frankie is deliciously transparent -- you can feel her blush before you see it. Corey Rieger's David has a touch of self-consciousness, but after all, he's the new guy. Don DiGiulio miraculously makes the comic relief believable as well as funny.

Nick Palladino has an unactorish ease as Rob and Jocelyn Lupetin and Varian Huddleston give swagger to Allison and outrageous B.J. Robert Isenberg and Shauna Clarke capably handle the unsympathetic roles.

As this may suggest, many of the characters are sitcom-sketchy. The dialogue, by Kukic channeling DeBartolo, is big on name-dropping (from Aristotle and Kierkegaard to Cobain and Bono), humorous banter and word play -- everyone's a Scrabble fan and verbal agility is the play's shorthand for intelligence. Some of this is funny, some forced.

Uncle Leo (solidly played by Robert J. Roberts) shows the pluses and minuses. He's a cliche of the adorable patriarch and he keeps coining malapropisms, but on second thought, many of them ("victorious" for "vicarious," "absinthe" for "absence") make supplemental sense.

So, though "Dream's" movie origins give it a kind of untheatrical flatness, that very meandering ease is audience-friendly. The characters may be cliches, but the banter is mainly cute, the actors appealing and the setting a realistic pleasure.