My Name Is Rachel Corrie is a play that has caused the blood to boil of too many people who have neither seen it nor read it. If you actually see the new production by the Alliance Theatre Lab in Miami Lakes, you'll soon realize that although Corrie's pro-Palestinian point of view is clearly and unapologetically presented, the protests and censorship efforts aimed at the play have made it far more famous than its artistic quality would merit.

Corrie, an American activist killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, was deeply sympathetic toward the Palestinians whose homes she tried to save from an Israeli bulldozer. That fact, her work with the International Solidarity Movement and her written criticisms of Israel's treatment of the families she met in Rafah have sparked efforts to quash productions of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in a number of American cities.

It happened here in 2007 when Plantation's Mosaic Theatre announced its plans to produce the play. After a firestorm of criticism, the company canceled its production.

Two years later, My Name Is Rachel Corrie has finally made it onto a South Florida stage. On Thursday, Alliance, a small professional company based at the Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes, opened its production of the Alan Rickman-Katharine Viner play, a script woven from Corrie's journal entries, letters and e-mails.

The Corrie portrayed by Kim Ehly is a liberal idealist, an artist and a dreamer whose deep well of empathy both inspires and haunts her. She is smart yet naive, strong but vulnerable. Her decision to leave the theoretical world of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., for life-and-death activism in Rafah seems inevitable, yet the moment has little weight, almost as if she were opting for a study-abroad program.

There are lines in My Name Is Rachel Corrie that would be laughable were they not so infuriating. For example, Corrie writes this in a naively impassioned e-mail to her mother: ``The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian nonviolent resistance.''

Yet there are also haunting moments, as when Corrie relates a dream about falling to her death ''off of something dusty and smooth and crumbling'' -- exactly what happened as she tried to climb the pile of rubble and dirt being displaced by the Israeli-operated bulldozer that killed her.

Neither Ehly, who seems unable to dig beneath the surface of Corrie's passions, nor director Adalberto J. Acevedo is able to camouflage the script's limitations to make My Name Is Rachel Corrie anything close to emotionally shattering theater.

The minimalist set, which takes us from Corrie's slovenly apartment to half-destroyed homes in Rafah, looks unfinished. And though the stage area is small, having Corrie write e-mails home from a wireless-enabled laptop rather than the Internet cafes she actually used seems a sloppy shortcut. Potentially moving video, including images of a ravaged Rafah and the real Corrie speaking out on world hunger as a child, is shown on a television so small that its impact is vastly diminished.

Truth is, the ending of the play -- unlike the awful end to Corrie's life -- is anticlimactic, both because of the script's structure and the staging at Alliance. That My Name Is Rachel Corrie can be seen and then debated, embraced or reviled is a good thing. But you wish the play and production were more deserving of all the attention.

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