Broadway is currently nursing a fetish for dysfunctional middle-class families and their medical issues: There's the musical Next to Normal, about a bipolar housewife and her family (which won a Pulitzer and some Tony Awards); Distracted, about a couple grappling with their 9-year-old son's ADHD and whether to medicate the boy; and the new revival of Mary Poppins, in which a witch-nanny takes over for absentee parents and is always on about how a spoonful of "sugar" helps "the medicine" go down.

Now those shows are starting to drift our way. Last weekend, the 5th Avenue Theatre closed its touring production of Next to Normal, and Mary Poppins will waft toward the Paramount this May. In the meantime, we have the Seattle premiere of Distracted by Lisa Loomer (The Waiting Room, Living Out) at ArtsWest. A local production, Distracted makes the not-so-radical case that kids with ADHD aren't so different from—and just might be products of—These Distracting Times™.

The play begins with video projections that quick-cut to the usual culprits: YouTube, Facebook, iPhones, USA Today, news shows, etc. Mama, played by Heather Hawkins, enters to tell us about her problematic son named Jesse, whose likes include grilled cheese sandwiches, rap and pop metal (Linkin Park gets a name-check), his Wii, "rocket balloons," screaming, and calling his parents "fucking liars." His dislikes include sitting still in class, putting on his pajamas, finishing tests, fire drills (he hates the sound of the alarm), and listening to other people.

Mommy's little Klaxon (played at convincing volume by Cameron Lee) can't keep on this way: His teacher is at the end of her tether, and the neighborhood mothers testify about the miracles that Ritalin and Prozac have performed on their fidgety kids. Mama tries all kinds of things before resigning her kid to Ritalin; Dad (Brandon Felker) thinks boys are congenitally agitated—no need to medicate away what evolution hath wrought. Their debates on the subject aren't especially illuminating, but it gives Loomer a chance to write a series of jokes and a few weakly wry scenes involving neurotic mothers, bizarre doctors, an ADHD diagnosis for George W. Bush (aggression, short attention span, inability to learn from past experience, etc.), and Mama and Dad trying to drive, talk to each other, and look up stuff on the internet all at the same time. Get it? We're all distracted! Over the course of two hours and 20 minutes, Loomer bangs this gong over and over and over again.

Despite the script's vast valley of repetition, director Christopher Zinovitch and his cast pluck out some small, satisfying moments—particularly Hawkins and Felker as Mama and Dad. Felker, best known for his popular horror-movie improv group Blood Squad, has a perfectly poised stage presence. His slightly curmudgeonly, boys-will-be-boys Dad is always doing something, but never does too much or steals focus—a difficult trick for most actors, and likely learned from Felker's years of practical study in front of comedy audiences. Still, even the best performances can't make up for the deficiencies of the script.