(L-R): Stephanie Wright Thompson as Anastasia Volinski and Joe Curnutte as The Host in Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War. photographer Ian Saville

And that’s not the whole title: it’s Samuel and Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War. Which informs you even less and confuses you even more, were you to ponder the title alone, regardless of the contents within the play, but you must also know that the New Ohio Theater is presenting this production created by The Mad Ones as part of their new season. Now, you are in tip top form and in the proper framework to contend with or to appreciate – or both – this semi sci-fi piece done with the most mundane of materials of setting, words, performance. And then, mull. If you will. Too.

The New Ohio Theater has a following, remarkable for a new company, only in its third year. These auditors come to investigate, hopefully to admire new works by new companies, new writers, new minds. Most of them –not all, by any means – were born generations later than the objects accumulated on stage perceived as genuine antiques: all these operating vacuum tubes, all those wires and cables making up the core of the radio station, this Russian radio station we perceive, neither dated nor actually identified by creators Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte and Lila Neugebauer. Neugebauer has directed the suspenseful unfolding play with a disciplined eye for detail on which she builds, not only employing setting, lighting and sound all crucial to its foxhole atmosphere but also for a level of performance that leaves you in a limbo of wonder: are these people actually people, this announcer an announcer, this reader a reader, this actress a singer? There’s little doubt that the guitar player is somewhat a guitar player but his guitar is aggressively red, his beard aggressively present, his cap stereotypically
Russian, all a bit much.

Because these apparent Russians not only deliver the news – where does it come from? The weather – likewise – and airy persiflage in English (for us? for their radio audience? meant to be Russian but transmogrified for theatrical purposes?) but also sing/perform bygone American cowboy and bluegrass ditties with conviction and vigor. Then, subside into silence, motionless. Knowing their audience is not actually hearing them? Or not knowing? The power goes off. The power comes on. Cryptic messages are received on the antique equipment, taken and translated with trepidation by Dr. Romanav (Marc Bovino). Host/Announcer (Joe Curnutte) waxes with hearty, manufactured radio bonhomie to counteract the effects of the messages. Anastasia (Stephanie Wright Thompson) sings fervently, reads from cue cards she finds on the littered control console.

All their bits and pieces of behavior seem to tell us of a life repeated and repeated under conditions of constant dread, their fear grown customary. The Robot War outside? Or are there robots inside this haven, here before us? And when Alexei (Michael Dalto) sings in faulty Russian, do they understand him, do they fear him? Or his silence? But – is he truly Russian? Is she? And what about the Host/Announcer? He is referred to as Alasdair by Dr. Romanav, who is called Samuel even though his given name is Mischa? Are we really in an early, primitively furnished, Russian radio station in a besieged Russian town or is this a construct of Samuel and Alasdair, whoever, whatever they are, surely not Russians, surely not radio station personnel, viscerally attuned to messages that come through the charged ether that seems to control them?

Director Lila Neugebauer has elicited handsome, occasionally electric performances from from her dedicated cast and supportive company. Set designer Laura Jellinek’s array of vintage wires, tubes and drab furnishings is vital to the fulfillment of curiosity and suspense which alternates on stage and in the audience, and Stowe Nelson’s sound design, Mike Inwood’s lighting design compound the atmosphere. I think you’ll like it.

New Ohio Theater, 154 Christopher Street (in the former Federal Building). Tickets: $18. $15, students, seniors. SmartTix.com or 212-868-4444. Wed-Sat 8 pm.