In the notes from playwright Abe Koogler about Staff Meal, directed by Morgan Green, currently at Playwrights Horizons, Koogler hopes that the audience, “will emerge from it the way you might emerge from a transportive meal in an unusual restaurant in a part of town you’ve never been to before. The avant garde work, shrouded with a uncertainty is most interesting when there appears to be a linear forward movement among characters during vignettes of scenes which take place in Gary Robinson’s restaurant, that once was packed, but by the end closes down.

At the top of the play Ben (Greg Keller) and Mina (Susannah Flood), sit near each other in a coffee shop working on their laptops. Eventually, their proximity prompts them to become familiar with each other so after a number of days, saying “Hi,” and other chatty comments, they leave and seek better coffee and/or food elsewhere. The search leads them to Gary Robinson’s restaurant.

The rapport and pacing between Keller and Flood is enjoyable and funny by these talented actors. However, it ends when they get bogged down ordering from a waiter who takes an inordinately long period of time to take their order and bring back an excellent wine. In the interim, they take humorous and sobering flights of fancy about their personal lives which include some of the most imaginative dialogue in the play. However, when the waiter has not brought their food, then the scene shifts with the mood, and the focus becomes their waiter and his experience at the restaurant.

As a flashback of “The Waiter” segment begins, Ben and Mina leave “hanging in the air,” the thread of dialogue along with Ben’s story about his dog, whom his parents mistreated during the time he lived with his family in Spain. Hampton Fluker is the waiter who enters the spotlight. He discusses his time at the restaurant joined by other members of the wait staff (Jess Barbagallo, Carmen M. Herlihy), and chef Christina (Erin Markey), who serves them their delicious “staff meal” before they begin the evening’s service. Fluker’s waiter declines the meal at this point because it is his first day and he is afraid he will throw up out of nervousness.

What is striking about this vignette is that Christina doesn’t come up with ordinary food for the staff, but serves them extraordinary dishes following the philosophy of Gary Robinson, who emphasizes the importance of being of service to others. As one of the servers affirms, “Our power, our glory increases only so much as we give it away, constantly, only so much as we serve.” This is akin to a Biblical verse which implies, if one would be a great leader, one must be great at serving others. This philosophy is the antithesis of that practiced by politicians who serve themselves first, last and always, a virus that has particularly attacked the former Republican Party known as the Trump MAGAS.

However, like fragments of wisdom and truth which filter in and out of our consciousness, this conversation among the staff as they eat Christina’s delicious food and reference two of Gary Robinson’s books, dissolves into the air, though it is a profound concept that is incredibly current. However, one of the reasons why this wisdom and the astute servers’ conversation comes to a screeching halt is that an audience member interrupts with an important question, akin to “What the hell?”

By this point in time, the fourth wall has been broken twice; first by a vagrant (Erin Markey), who attempted to steal Mina’s laptop, though Mina elicited the help of an audience member to watch it for her when she went to the bathroom, because Ben wasn’t there that day. Luckily, Mina interrupts The Vagrant’s theft and sends her away without the laptop as Mina chides the negligent audience member, who was obedient to the playwright and didn’t tell The Vagrant, “Stop thief!”

The second breaking of the fourth wall is by a disruptive “audience member” (the fine Stephanie Berry), who is “annoyed” and questions the direction of the play defining it as meaningless, unrelated to her life, not current-when the world is burning down, and a waste of the gift of the audience’s time. Joining the other actor/servers onstage, she then discusses what she considers meaningful, her life, and the direction it has taken recently.

Of course, this is humorous and gives way to the notion that audience members’ opinions don’t always jive with theater professionals, though they can make or break them via word of mouth recommendations. Then the playwright forestalls audience opinions about his avant garde, surrealistic, weird work, using Berry as a a mouthpiece when the playwright has her say, “Do you ever get this feeling with young writers, or early writers, writers who are developing….do you ever wonder: when will they develop?” Berry’s audience member excoriates the quality of the play, Staff Meal, addressing the characters and absent playwright before sharing what is relatable to her in her life.

On consideration this surreal vignette works because of Berry’s authentic, spot-on performance which is confessional and makes us empathize with her even more so than with the other vignettes. But then she leaves and Koogler picks up where he left off back to the servers discussing the dwindling clientele and whether or not Robinson is going to close the restaurant down.

Then time and space shift once more. At this point, the servers and the couple have disappeared and the vignette with The Vagrant (Erin Markey) occurs. She explains that she takes on three roles, one of which is the chef, but the segment of The Vagrant involves her living in a hole and trying to acquire laptops so that she can get a job. Ah ha! We have the explanation of The Vagrant attempting to steal Mina’s laptop early on in the play. Eventually, she goes for a job interview and is hired and tells us she lived an extraordinary ordinary life and concludes with her affirmation that the rest of the play is about “how it ended.”

Berry’s audience member returns, warning us that she has been found out to be an artifice, and her role in the play is over, but she notices the weather outside is shifting and becoming ominous. The time has shifted once more and events move toward an unsettling conclusion. However, we do find out what happened to Ben’s dog, after they leave the restaurant without their food or wine. The waiter receives a delectable “staff meal,” Ben and Mina are separated walking home, and The Waiter is left questioning if Christina is still in the restaurant.

At this juncture it’s time to reconsider the audience member/playwright twitting himself about what he’s written. However, the play is more naturalistic in its chaotic, unthreaded, seeming randomness with bits of profound meaning stuffed here and there, like life, perhaps. In that we realize that we make meaning from our own lives, as random and strange as events can sometimes be, which have no rhyme or reason. Indeed, a fictional play with a neat beginning, middle and ending is easy to follow, but is perhaps easily dismissed as fiction. Staff Meal, as surreal as it is, is darkly memorable.

To assist with the sets which dissolve away to a bare stage, Jian Jung’s minimalist scenic design creates a cafe, a kitchen, a restaurant dining room and the dark ominous streets. Additional kudos go to Kaye Voyce’s simple (costume design), though I thought the elaborate costume for The Vagrant was interestingly layered with various “stuff.” Masha Tsimring (lighting design), kept segments toward the end foreboding, and Tei Blow (sound design) and Steve Cuiffo (illusion design), executed Morgan Green’s vision for Staff Meal.

Staff Meal will keep you guessing and wondering and perhaps as annoyed as Stephanie Berry’s Audience Member, trying to find the portal to understanding what’s beyond this unusual restaurant that serves its staff better than its customers. It runs with no intermission at Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street. https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/plays/staff-meal/