When I was a little girl, we went to church religiously. But we were Jewish - go figure." So begins Canadian-born Frannie Sheridan's tale of being raised Catholic by Jewish, Holocaust-survivor parents who were terrified to reveal their religious heritage.

As this opening suggests, Sheridan has a fascinating tale to tell. But in I Tried to Be Normal, her one-woman show at the Theatre Project, she doesn't always tell it in the most captivating manner.

The main difficulty is one of vacillating tone. Granted, tonal shifts can add texture to a show. But - as directed by Lynna Goldhar Smith, who co-wrote the script - Sheridan's varied approaches often seem more like the efforts of a performer trying to find her way than a series of deliberate choices.

In the course of the hourlong piece, we see Sheridan as her present-day self; Sheridan as a child, portraying herself as well as her six siblings growing up in their denominationally dysfunctional family; Sheridan as her refugee parents; Sheridan as a stand-up comic, another of her careers; and Sheridan as a sophisticated, highly critical doppelganger she calls "Frankie."

Her portrayal of her Viennese doctor father is by far the most moving. Indeed, the account of this persecuted man is so powerful, it overshadows his daughter's story.

Hunching her shoulders and adapting a Viennese accent, tinged with Yiddish, Sheridan transforms herself into her deeply scarred father, a man who fled his homeland only to wind up in a Canadian refugee camp, forced to share quarters with a Nazi prisoner. When he finally established a medical practice in Saskatchewan, he was nearly beaten to death by a rival German doctor and his wife.

After this incident, her father uprooted the family, changed their name from "Sigal" to "Sheridan" and converted to Catholicism. He also warned them over and over: "Never tell anyone you're a Jew."

All of the children wound up with "identity issues," says Frannie, who has spent most of her life "trying to figure out what was real and what was not." Sorting reality from fiction is the central theme of I Tried to Be Normal. It's a theme that gives Sheridan latitude to experiment with various non-naturalistic devices, such as those appearances by the doppelganger Frankie and the interludes of standup comedy (though many of the jokes are a bit lame).

The arbitrariness of this mixture of elements, however, makes the piece seem like a work-in-progress. Even the play's penultimate speech - in which all of Sheridan's figurative performance masks drop away and she addresses us as herself - comes across more like the successful conclusion of a therapy session than the climax of a dramatic work. (And it's telling in terms of the evening's uneven focus that the final image belongs not to her, but to her father, who's seen in a rare, joyous moment.)

I Tried to Be Normal evolved from an earlier piece Sheridan called The Waltonsteins. Another incarnation is also in the works. Filmmaker Arthur Hiller has expressed interest in making a movie - with a full cast - of Sheridan's story.

I Tried to Be Normal leaves no doubt that this is a story with enormous potential, or that it has many avenues yet to be explored.

I Tried to Be Normal

Where: Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Dec. 22

Tickets: $15

Call: 410-752-8558