As you enter the intimate space that the Women's Theatre Project calls home, the era of its newest production -- Silent Heroes -- quickly becomes apparent.

It isn't Jodi Dellaventura's set, a nondescript room on a South Carolina military base, that establishes the period. Ashley Rigg's costumes, a mixture of sheath dresses and folksy maternity wear and hippie togs, certainly underscore the characters' personalities and the play's time frame. But even before the cast emerges, the hit parade of preshow music reveals that it's late 1975.

The work of Linda Escalera Baggs, who spent her growing-up years on Marine bases where her father was stationed, Silent Heroes is intended as a tribute to the women who stood by their daredevil husbands before, during and after the Vietnam War. Touching on personal sacrifice, patriotism, dissent, marital violence and more, the play's themes should resonate powerfully as another controversial war grinds on.

Trouble is, both the script and director Genie Croft's production are unremarkable and unrevealing, though Baggs' story should have been rife with dramatic potential.

In the middle of the night, the wives of six Marine pilots gather in the ready room at the Marine Corps Air Station. There has been a fatal crash, and one of them is now a widow -- but which woman? As they wait for their men to return, the women pass the time gabbing, arguing, comforting each other and (this being a play) revealing several dark secrets.

June (a warm Sally Bondi), facing widowhood for a second time, is the women's leader as she tries to help the others maintain dignity and calm. Eleanor (the always-watchable Barbara Sloan), the brittle wife of a Vietnam veteran, inexplicably decides that the pregnant Patsy (a jittery Jaime Libbert-Smith) must admit to the assembled wives that her hubby regularly beats her up.

The sardonic Kitty (sassy Kirsten Upchurch) reveals a real knack for putting her foot in her mouth. Miranda (an earnest Jennifer Toohey), a hippie chick whose future dreams don't include life as a military wife, outrages the others by admitting her past as an antiwar protester. And Felicia (an oddly stiff Tara Vodihn), the wife of a rare-for-the-era black pilot, is a reserved, by-the-book woman with simmering -- if understandable -- resentments.

While they await the return of five of their husbands, the women drift or storm in and out of the ready room. Baggs has them pick fights or take bathroom breaks in order to let just a few characters share the stage. That early-on but very obvious ''bombshell'' about Patsy's abuse feels like one item on a checklist. Abused wife? Check. Racism? Check. Adultery? Check. Political conflict? Check.

Thematic touchstones don't always equal compelling drama, however -- as Silent Heroes demonstrates.

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