You can see why rising Hollywood stars Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Owen Teague (IT) were drawn to Joe White two-handed drama Blackout Songs, making its New York debut at the MCC Theater Space after a successful run in the U.K. The show is a glorified acting exercise about two down-and-out addicts who can’t seem to quit each other or their intoxicant of choice. You half expect an instructor to emerge from the back of the auditorium at any moment to encourage the performers to tone things down.

She’s a well-heeled dilettante in a fur-lined quote, quick with a witty observation as if she’s auditioning for an Old Hollywood movie or her own reality series. He’s a struggling art student and childhood cancer survivor who’s convinced that alcohol is as important as acrylics to achieve Francis Bacon-like immortality on a canvas. After meeting near the coffee machine at an AA meeting where he is visibly shaking, we catch up with the pair in a series of short vignettes that expose a relationship built on codependency as much as genuine romantic affection.

Lee and Teague hurl themselves into the outsize roles with a fearless abandon that is both impressive and numbingly one-note over the course of a very long 90 minutes. While director Rory McGregor moves his cast nimbly around the wide wood-panel-lined stage that represents multiple locations in their on-again-off-again affair (designed by Scott Pask and lit by Stacey Derosier), he doesn’t bring much clarity to White’s challenging nonlinear script — which wallows in narrative confusion as it plunges both the audience and the characters into repeated bouts of alcoholic amnesia between some harrowing depictions of addiction at its worst.

The effect is initially fascinating, but ultimately exhausting — like enduring the slurry rant of that friend who’s had two too many and now just won’t shut up. In real life, you can just call the friend an Uber. But in the case of these sloppy star-crossed lushes, we’re still left to puzzle out who they are exactly and why they can’t manage to move on. (Tellingly, we only learn their names in the show’s final minutes.) ★★☆☆☆

BLACKOUT SONGS
MCC Theater Space, Off Broadway
Running time: 95 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through February 28 for $49 to $129