The strength of Felix Pire's one-man play is that it is so personal. And it's weakness is that it is so personal.

‘‘The Origins of Happiness in Latin,’’ a world premiere produced as part of Arizona Theatre Company's three-play RepFest, is a coming-of-age memoir, a look back at the ’70s and the actor/playwright's youth in the Cuban section of Hialeah, Fla. Life is hard there, hearts are soft, accents are thick — so thick, in fact, that much of Pire's one-and-a-half hour monologue is unintelligible.

And that's too bad. I wanted to like the Pire family (yes, the playwright uses real names and, supposedly, real events), but just soon as I'd begin to make an emotional connection, Pire — in the guise of his beloved grandmother Mima — would soar into strongly Cuban-accented English, leaving me, and my emotions, far behind.

But there's still a lot to like here.

As Pire relates various events in his colorful family, a careful listener can follow the major theme of ‘‘Happiness’’: Family is everything.

And what a family. Mima, once you-know-who dies, wants to return to Cuba and live in the fancy building across the street from her childhood home; no one is heartless enough to tell her that the building — or the Cuba she remembers — no longer exists.

Pire's grandfather wants him to listen to the tape recordings he's made of the family's pet parakeets, but the highly Americanized Pire only wants to listen to the BeeGees.

Pire's younger brother is self-conscious about his weight, so the self-righteous Pire, in a cruel and mistaken attempt to teach him to ‘‘accept his body,’’ steals the brother's shirt at the beach, forcing the humiliated child to stay in the water for hours.

These vignettes meander back and forth, seemingly disconnected until the end, when Pire draws them all together in a stirring soliloquy that sheds light on what they all really meant. Small betrayals happen every day, so you'd better learn to forgive and forget. After all, ‘‘familia es familia.’’

Mostly, the soliloquy works. The part that doesn't is when Pire interjects his recent acting history (his agent died and he's having trouble getting parts; he's been in movies with Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis). After this, his assertion that the audience is also part of his ‘‘familia’’ smacks of opportunism. Then again, maybe he means it.

Theater is an odd thing. The best is about real life, yet somehow, the more vividly theater attempts to paint real life, the stronger the shadows become. Thus frequently, in order to tell the truth on stage, you have to lie.

It could be that ‘‘The Origins of Happiness in Latin’’ needs more lies.

IF YOU GO
What: Arizona Theatre Company's ‘‘The Origins of Happiness in Latin’’
Where: Herberger Theater, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, 1 p.m. Saturday
How much: $26-$51
Info:
Grade: C+