Just months after Playwrights Horizons mounted a trippy production of John J. Caswell Jr.’s mental-illness family drama Wet Brain, the Arizona-raised playwright returns to Off Broadway with an absurdist comedy called Scene Partners, opening Tuesday at the Vineyard Theatre as a star vehicle for Dianne Wiest. Indeed, it’s a treat to see the two-time Oscar winner command the stage as a 75-year-old frump from the Midwest who impulsively decides to move to Hollywood in search of film stardom circa 1985.

Despite her unassuming appearance, Wiest’s Meryl shows a cut-throat determination to reach her goals. She brings a pistol to a meeting with a top agent, befriends a well-connected acting coach, casually derides another real-life two-time Oscar winner who shares her first name (“If I may be so bold, she’s got absolutely nothing on me”) and then fashions her own life story into a cinematic showcase for her talents — playing herself from infant to old age.

Caswell is not content to tell this crazy story straight. He tosses in a fantastical Russian train, Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, Vincent Price, Dr. Noah Drake from General Hospital, and karaoke versions of both the Talking Heads and Corey Hart. Indeed, never surrender seems to be the mantra of the show — which stubbornly resists classification and any attempt to wrestle concrete meaning. Director Rachel Chavkin leans into the the unorthodox, treating Riccardo Hernández’s set as a three-dimensional split-screen with floating and sliding panels for David Bengali’s many video projections. But the pacing feels off, with the off-kilter references and sudden non sequiturs accumulating in a way that feels awkwardly improvisational rather than intentional.

Wiest makes quite an impression as an unassuming woman who quite suddenly assumes quite a bit about her value and legitimate claims to narcissistic stardom — she commands our attention but never transforms into the monster that her character in some way appears to be. It helps that her five castmates, particularly Johanna Day as her very grounded sister and Josh Hamilton as both her craven agent and Aussie inflected coach/director, provide an onstage contrast.