Susannah Flood and Greg Keller in Staff Meal. Photo: Chelcie Parry

We all have our theater preferences. I lean toward experiences with storylines and characters where ideas are introduced and developed, and expectations are defied.  I like to be surprised—which is why I’m careful not to read anything about a show beforehand.  And I like a play that takes risks. Quirky and funny are great, too.

Strange, then, that I didn’t take to Staff Meal, the quirky, surprising, sometimes funny, risk-taking show now playing at Playwrights Horizons. The play is about…  Well, this might be the first clue to my reaction.  I am not sure what the play is about.

There’s a promising start. A man and a woman meet at a coffee shop and have a halting conversation over the course of a couple days. They make their way to a mysterious restaurant, where the service is slow because a waiter has to make a very long trip to the wine cellar. And then…lots of things happen. There are flashbacks and different characters come and go, including a vagrant, a chef, an enigmatic owner, a couple of waiters and a dancer. There are many storylines: a romance between the man and woman; the waiter adjusting to his job; the restaurant’s failure; the dancer adjusting to life after the death of her husband. But not much ties these disparate elements together, and that lack of cohesion drags the play down.

It would seem playwright Abe Koogler is conscious of this problem because about half an hour into the play, one of the characters objects vociferously, “What is this play about?” But there’s a difference between a playwright’s self-awareness that he, like many young playwrights, has fallen into the navel-gazing trap of failing to write about things that matter, and that playwright’s ability to address the problem. In place of substance there is window dressing. At times it is playful and fun, at times plodding—long, winding monologues chasing a strange tangent, which by themselves could be interesting but in repertory wear the viewer down. It’s like a meandering walk—as long as you’re okay with not going anywhere, interesting scenery can sustain you. But if you want to go somewhere, if you want to be transported, or learn something about somebody or about the world at large, or experience emotional connection with the characters on stage, that is not this play.

The cast and crew do a fine job. Jian Jung’s sets move in and out in in a neat pas de deux, though the kinks were still being worked out when I saw the show. Masha Tsimring helps to create some neat stage pictures with her lighting. Performers Susannah Flood and Greg Keller (the coffee-shop couple, credited as Mina and Ben, respectively, but I’m pretty sure their names are never mentioned) get the ball rolling with their furtive glances and uncertainty. Hampton Fluker as the wine-cellar waiter handles his very long monologues with grace. Stephanie Berry breathes fresh air into the show when she’s on stage. And kudos to the LED board’s comic timing.  But everyone’s efforts can’t make up for the show’s directionlessness.

It’s hard to know how much to lay at the feet of director Morgan Green. On the one hand, the script is flawed, and she manages to create quality moments, especially at the top of the show. On the other hand, the show seemed to go on for too long , a neat trick given its relatively short hour and a half run time. While I applaud the show’s surrealistic inventiveness, I’d be happier watching something that made me feel something other than impatient.