By Michael Kuchwara

AP Drama Critic

NEW YORK — Focus, people. “Distracted” is worth the effort.

Lisa Loomer’s theatrical primer on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a smartly comic, sharply observant and surprisingly humane play involving a 9-year-old boy and his bewildered parents, particularly his mother.

The production, which the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Wednesday at its off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, is also superbly directed by Mark Brokaw. He gives the exhaustingly detailed story a clarity that never falters despite the twists and turns of a rapidly unfolding plot.

Handling most of those details is the lovely Cynthia Nixon as the beleaguered Mom, referred to in the play as Mama. Nixon brings an appealing apprehension to this woman as she searches for help in dealing with her son Jesse, an overactive, overbearing young man given to fits of impatience and an occasional obscenity or two.

It’s the mother’s quest for answers that gives Loomer that chance to explain what ADD is — or as it is now called ADHD, adding the word “hyperactivity.” And how it can be alleviated.

Mama is willing to try anything to help her offspring, despite skepticism from various others, including her quixotic husband, portrayed by Josh Stamberg with growing impatience.

As he complains: “Impulsivity, short attention span, risk taking … these are symptoms — of childhood! Is childhood a disorder now?”

Loomer carefully presents various sides of the issue, complicated by the over-stimulated, plugged-in, totally wired world of today, where nothing lasts more than a minute or else is reduced to a sound bite.

That world is vividly portrayed in Mark Wendland’s mobile settings, aided by Tal Yarden’s high-tech projections and music and sound design of David Van Tieghem.

As the mother consults a parade of people including neighbors, teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists and more. And then there’s the question of medication — should the boy be given drugs, calmed down with Ritalin?

If this makes the plot sound overstuffed, well, it is. And we haven’t even gotten to the parts of the play where several actors break the fourth wall and talk to the audience.

But Brokaw marshals a delightful collection of players to portray a variety of supporting roles. Among the standouts are Peter Benson as a trio of doctors, one more looney than the next; Lisa Emery, as an obsessive-compulsive neighbor in need of serious medication herself, and Shana Dowdeswell as the teenager next-door, a young woman with a mutilation problem.

Loomer is the author of such issue-oriented works as “The Waiting Room” (a look at the concept of female beauty and its effect on women’s health), and “Living Out” (about nannies, immigration and the problems of parenting). “Distracted” certainly doesn’t shrink from its soap box either.

But the playwright has more than a message on her mind. For much of the evening, Jesse, portrayed by Matthew Gumley, is a rebellious offstage voice, shrieking defiance. When he finally makes an appearance, it is startling. You suddenly have concrete evidence of what the parents are trying to deal with — and can fully understand why they are willing to put up with also being “Distracted.”