Written by David Rabe; directed by Scott Elliott

Performances through April 15, 2018

Now 78, playwright David Rabe can’t be accused of coasting on his considerable laurels: his plays Sticks and Bones and Streamers are seared into theatergoers’ consciousness as some of the most invigorating and thoughtful excursions into the damaged American psyche thanks to Vietnam. His latest, Good for Otto, is among his most ambitious. Nearly three hours long, it explores the troubled psyches of people at the Northwood Mental Health Center in the Berkshires: two psychologists and their patients, all weighed down by the horrors of ordinary life.

The therapists, Dr. Robert Michaels (played by Ed Harris with his customary combination of intensity and folksiness) and Evangeline (another intelligent Amy Madigan portrayal), are as flawed as their charges, especially Robert, a veteran doctor haunted by the specter of his dead mother, who committed suicide when Robert was nine. Evangeline’s own difficulties are brought up late in the play, when she appears at Robert’s doorstep drunk and ready to confess her shortcomings.

The troubled individuals these two deal with include Jane, whose grown son Jimmy inexplicably blew his brains out with a shotgun, the cause of her frequent headaches; Barnard, a retiree who can’t see the point in getting out of bed; Jerome, a hoarder unable to move out of his mother’s basement; Alex, who’s slowly taking the painful steps of coming out of the closet; Timothy, who can’t handle others in social situations; and Frannie, a teenager whose life is such a shambles that she’s cutting herself while being raised by Nora, a well-meaning but ineffectual foster mom.

Rabe generously gives these people ample chance to tell their stories—he even allows Jimmy to explain why he killed himself in a painful monologue—but this very generosity is also his long and unwieldy play’s undoing. Very simply, some people deserve to be heard, while others make less compelling cases for themselves. Rabe realizes that Jerome isn’t very interesting, so he’s quickly shunted aside to the piano. (Occasional song interludes by the cast—mainly accompanied by actor Kenny Mellman, who plays Jerome—punctuate these confessionals in a strained attempt to break up the repetitiveness.) Likewise, much stage time is given over to Barnard’s constant harping about how Evangeline is increasingly annoying him by ending their sessions with a curt “to be continued.” However charmingly F. Murray Abraham plays him, Barnard gets whiny quickly.

Frannie, on the other hand, deserves her considerable time onstage, thanks to how incisively and emotionally complex young Rileigh McDonald plays her, aided by Rhea Perlman’s sympathetically bemused Nora. And there’s intriguing drama whenever Robert’s ghostly mother appears, not least because of the ingratiating Charlotte Hope. But chunks of Good for Otto are deadly: Exhibit A is Timothy (a finely flustered Mark Linn-Baker), proud owner of a hamster named Otto, who needs a delicate operation. This meandering subplot seems to exist only to give the play its offbeat title.

Scott Elliott’s typically shrewd directing isn’t able to overcome how episodic Rabe has made Otto, diluting its dramatic impact. Although it focuses on the messiness of its characters’ lives (and includes unsubtle shots at our convoluted and weak health care system), Otto might be the tidiest play Rabe has yet written, and consequently one of his weakest.

Good for Otto

The New Group, Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org