Blood Sugar is too moving an effort.

Until the early 1990s, Sue Gaetzman was a successful Los Angeles-based actress, featured in movies such The Doctor (with William Hurt) and Jagged Edge (with Jeff Bridges), winning awards for her roles at San Diego''s Old Globe Theater, and known to soap opera fans as Madeline Rutherford on Days of Our Lives.

Then, in the span of 18 months, she lost her husband to kidney cancer, her father to Lou Gehrig''s disease, her sister to diabetes, and underwent a kidney and pancreas transplant due to her own diabetic condition.

During this traumatic period, Gaetzman entered a writing class and started a journal about the calamitous events unfolding in her life. Blood Sugar, Gaetzman''s one-woman show now playing at the Magic Circle Center, is the result of that journal work. In a 90-minute show, the actress relates key episodes in her life, relives her tragedies and emerges triumphant, ready to seize life and love again.

Gaetzman is a talented actress and a lovely woman. But Blood Sugar is difficult to watch. First, the immediacy of watching a "show" where the actress herself lived through such horrible sadness removes the emotional safety net created by the artifice of theater. There is no distance between Gaetzman and her audience--I felt more like a friend listening to someone pour out her heart, than a participant in, or witness to, an artistic endeavor. Indeed, the director said during the post-show discussion that several emotional scenes were toned down because he recognized audiences "wouldn''t be able to take it." I thank him for that.

Last Friday''s opening night audience was very moved by the show, and there are some very touching, even humorous moments in it. But the script needs a ruthless editor, and, perhaps, a director who is not personally close to Gaetzman. She has wonderful material to work with, a moving story to tell, and the talent to do it: It''s not quite there yet.