"Something back there broke them," one character says of his parents in Year Zero, Michael Golamco's play about Khmer youth growing up in Long Beach. They're young adults, raised by survivors of Cambodia's killing fields, trying to make their way in a world haunted by the ghosts of their parents' pasts.

Rap-writing, Dungeons & Dragons–playing Vuthy (Moses Yim) just wants to make it out of school every day without getting beaten up. His sister Ra (Elizabeth Daruthayan) is studying for the MCAT, and they're both dazed from the recent death of their mother. Ra's straitlaced boyfriend Glenn (Christian T. Ver) and her newly unincarcerated high-school flame Han (Johnny Patchamatla) represent opposite versions of social and financial success. Han is a gang member with cash and influence; Glenn is a Banana Republic–dressed radiologist. Both Ra and Vuthy seem conflicted about what each of these paths offers—Ra trying to figure out whom to date and Vuthy whom to emulate.

Yim, who was recently in ReAct's Yellow Face, gives the strongest performance. His hiphop-inflected speech and unabashed nerdiness are endlessly charming—his slangified D&D game where orcs drink 40s is a highlight of the show. Yim is responsible for much of the show's levity, and his energy keeps the audience engaged, even though the overall pacing is slow. "What happened to your eye?" Ra asks when Vuthy comes home from school with a shiner. "Samoans," he grumbles. When Glenn tries to win Vuthy over with a Superman comic, he tells Vuthy that Superman is a great immigrant story—coming from another planet, he arrives in America and achieves great success, but he must maintain a double life and his home planet is his one Achilles' heel. Vuthy's response is both sarcastic and insightful: "One problem: Superman was white." If he'd been any other color, would the farm couple have raised him as their own child? No way, Vuthy says—he would've ended up at "Smallville Social Services."

The rest of the cast isn't as great as Yim, but each actor has powerful moments. The production's real weakness is a combination of Golamco's stilted dialogue and Miko Premo's direction, which fails to help the actors find their chemistry and rhythm.

Year Zero brings up intense themes: Han's gruff rationalization that "good people don't survive"; the burden the parents' survival places on their children, who must question everything they do in light of what happened to the previous generation. Copies of Seng Kok Ung's memoir I Survived the Killing Fields are for sale in the Hugo House lobby. He's the owner of Phnom Penh Noodle House. Maybe head over there for postshow conversation.