LILY JANIAK’S THEATER PICK

There’s an Alice, a birthday party, a “mad” one and a mysterious character who keeps intoning, “Who are you?” — and won’t be satisfied by any answer.

Utopia Theatre Project’s latest show isn’t “Alice in Wonderland,” but the world premiere is inspired in part by Lewis Carroll’s classic. Anne Yumi Kobori’s play begins in a psychiatric hospital, where Alice (Kobori) works furiously at a typewriter, unfazed by the delusional antics of fellow patients like Hattie (Katie Rubin). Alice is a successful author, still churning out pages for her publisher, James (Ben Euphrat), even as she suffers from anxiety that prompts hospitalization and drugs with serious side effects.

Kobori’s work maps out the mind’s nether regions — the places where a childlike spirit of adventure might intersect with both an artist’s fearless imagination and an unstable mind’s inability to hold a grip on reality — and how that complexity can’t or won’t be boxed in by a partner’s needs.

Maryssa Wanlass directs.

“Every Day Alice”: 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Feb. 15-16. Through March 9. $12-$35. PianoFight, 144 Taylor St., S.F. www.utopiatheatreproject.com

Utopia Theatre Project Anne Yumi Kobori, left, and Jessica Uher in “Every Day Alice” at the Utopia Theatre Project.