It’s always a ticklish proposition, the portrayal of the “cool.” Inevitably, when a dutiful director stages a party or, as in this case, a techno-bumping rave, there is an unfortunate slip ‘twixt the beer bong and the lip.

In the One Year Lease production of Caridad Svich’s “Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (A Rave Fable),” the company tries frantically to match Ms. Svich’s gorgeous, drunken poetry. They play a fake music video. A character bops around with glowsticks. But the result is far from intoxicating. Dehydrated by bad pacing, hubris, and uncomfortable choreography, “Iphigenia” feels rather more “hangover” than “spree.”

Ms. Svich’s play deserves better. A version of “Iphigenia at Aulis” with track marks, this “rave fable” re-invents the story of Agamemnon’s doomed daughter — sacrificed for favorable winds — as one of modern political exigency. This contemporary Iphigenia (Brina Stinehelfer) is born to a wealthy South American general, complete with aviator shades and military jacket, and a coked-up, spaced-out mother. When polls turn against her dictator daddy, he stages Iphigenia’s kidnap and murder to snag the sympathy vote. Pursued down the streets of her dusty, ruined city by a chorus of dead seamstresses, the princess tries to find her escape in dancing, drugs, sex — any ecstasy she can.

Ms. Svich offers her a number of dance partners, some of them virtual, like the newscaster (Nick Flint) who seems to talk to her directly; some of them real, like a prophetess–chicken vendor (Susannah Melone) offering “legs and wings, to run or fly.” And the dead seamstresses, played by strapping men in drag, only haunt her on their way to haunting us. They are the dead girls of Ciudad Juarez, piling up as mysteries at our southern border.

Of course, no one would know that from watching this production, as directed by Ianthe Demos and Danny Bernardy. All of the chorus’s delicacy — the way Ms. Svich layers elegy and comedy, the shame and fear she feels for these lost girls — drowns in shrillness. The Juarez connection must be rooted out from stage directions, and we miss entirely the way that Ms. Svich makes the anonymous city stand in for the gods of ancient drama — just as unforgiving, just as hungry, just as brutal.

The co-directors clearly adore a rich mise-en-scene, and they and set designer James Hunting, video designer Brian Michael Thomas, and light designer Mike Riggs do arrive at moments of stirring beauty. Lit obliquely by a single misty beam, a girl lies spread-eagled in the dust; cat-eyed Achilles (Mr. Bernardy), trained to be androgynous since birth, rises dripping from a forest pool. But these are designs meant to appeal in photographs, not elapsing over time. The video work wears out its welcome, and scenes seem to have the hiccups, jolted by constant blackouts and intermittent sound design.

Worst of all, the directors strand poor Ms. Stinehelfer center stage for long monologues, letting her dance awkwardly while pretending to be in a trance state. She needs a kind of Brechtian remove to handle Ms. Svich’s baroque language, something unpredictable or monstrous or exhausted to counteract its gluey richness. In fact, only Ms. Melone hits the right notes — literally — with her stripped and strangely breathy voice.When she talks, you hear how dry the air must be, how long she has been railing against fate, and for how long she has gone unheard.

Until September 16 (46 Walker St., between Broadway and Church Street, 212-357-3101).