Wallace Shawn’s best known collaboration with director André Gregory is the 1981 Louis Malle film My Dinner With André, in which the two denizens of the downtown arts scenes engage in a rambling philosophical discussion over dinner at the now-defunct Café des Artistes. Gregory, 91, is now directing the 82-year-old Shawn’s latest play, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, a three-act domestic drama that’s as wordy, erudite, and esoteric as its title.

The play consists of a series of monologues — most of them quite long — delivered by four actors seated at the lip of the stage at the Greenwich House Theatre. They seldom interact with each other, or even acknowledge each other’s existence, reflecting how their characters seem to inhabit bubbles of solipsistic isolation where the feelings of others dare not intrude.

Josh Hamilton is a successful novelist who married his high school sweetheart (Maria Dizzia) but seems mostly ashamed of her as an intellectual lightweight; he’s been in a long-time affair with an aspiring writer (Hope Davis). Finally, John Early plays the couple’s now-grown son, who fears he will never match his father’s achievements except perhaps in sexual deviancy. (In one confessional moment, he matter-of-factly confesses to his desire to kiss his mom on the lips and fondle her breasts.)

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Josh Hamilton and Maria Dizzia in Wallace Shawn’s ‘What We Did Before Our Moth Days’ (Photo: Luis Manuel Diaz)

Early on, Hamilton’s lascivious literary lion, Dick, relates a childhood story about how he decided to call the day a person died their “moth day” — and the play’s long speeches all seem to be told retrospectively from beyond the grave. (Dick himself discloses that he dies just before his 45th birthday.) They also circle ideas of how to while away the time between our birth and moth days, with much fixation on love, sex, and leaving a legacy.

These are questions that understandably would interest Shawn, the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn — whose mistress, Lillian Ross, chronicled her four-decade affair with the senior Shawn in a bestselling memoir in 1998, after his death. But the younger Shawn channels this autobiographical material not into a juicy domestic drama but into a glorified radio play that keeps the sentiment, intrigue, and romance at a prim arms-length distance. Shawn is a gifted writer, and the cast deliver their lines with a cunning casualness that’s part back-of-the-bar raconteur and part 92nd Street Y. Early, best known for his comedy and shows like Search Party, makes the strongest impression here, issuing quirky opinions with disarming forthrightness — including his resentment over the poor timing of his father’s death when he was hooking up with a prostitute.

But there’s not really enough material, or narrative surprise, to sustain three long hours (with two intermissions). Perhaps that’s the point — life isn’t always eventful; the incidents that resonate the most deeply are the ones that we’re liable to overlook in the moment. For all of its isolated moments of real insight, What We Did Before Our Moth Days seems most comfortable in liminal spaces that we’re liable to forget. ★★★☆☆

WHAT WE DID BEFORE OUR MOTH DAYS
Greenwich House Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 3 hours (with two intermissions)
Tickets on sale through May 10 for $65 to $210