Dinner parties are supposed to be fun things. Make some delicious food. Invite some old and dear friends. Crank up the dance music, pop open some wine, and get ready for some light banter and an easy, breezy evening. Well, in playwright Kristoffer Diaz’s world, as Manhattan is crumbling under environmentally-produced heavy rains, dinner with friends is a thing with a dark agenda.

Diaz’s Things With Friends is production 184 in Alleyway Theatre’s 46^th season, and it’s onstage now to April 26. Diaz describes this work as a “rupture of realism,” and yes, it is all that a bag of chips. Make that a roaster of sweet potatoes. It’s an oddly dystopian send up of a world in chaos, and friends who are struggling to live their lives as killer rainstorms wash away their world. I’ll be blunt: my favorite things about this show were Shanntina Moore’s awesome blue and pearl shoes, Sunny Griffith monologue about a college roadtrip, and the retro 1960s French pop music.

Adversity changes people; that’s a given. After landmark bridges and tunnels are felled by killer rains, Adele and Burt (Sarah French and David C. Mitchell) are coping from the comfort of their 27^th floor Manhattan apartment. Their dear friends Vy and Chabby (Shanntina Moore and Stan Klimecko) have retreated to New Jersey along with the rest of Manhattan, it seems, and now they’re venturing back to the island for dinner. This is where it gets weird. There’s an agenda brewing, and super-host Burt and naïve Adele are slow to figure out their friends’ motives.

Our guide for this journey through rare meat and friend hell is Smirna Mercedes who steps from the house to the stage and announces herself as the playwright. She sets each scene and wisely steps away to pop up elsewhere on Tania Barrenechea’s attractive (mid-century modern NYC-chic) set after a few minutes. Mercedes tackles this role with equal parts of pride and a slightly bemused air:  she knows what’s coming and isn’t wont to give it up, but she’s liking what is unfolding and wants us to like it, too. Frankly, at times, I didn’t.

All four diners are distinct in their portrayals. Mitchell is the uber-host, making sure the steak is cooked just so and the bread is in the basket. He always has a bit of an edge about him, like he’s ready to pounce given the choice. French is so overly cheerful, verging on Pollyanna-ish, with an unbreakable smile…yet she is wistful when she’s gazing out the window at where the bridge used to be that often brought them company. She plays this with a fey childlike charm. Moore and Klimecko are more pointed, more deliberate.  Frankly, it was hard to really like these four, until Chabby, Jr., called Joony bursts in. Wonderfully played by Sunny Griffith in her first Alleyway role, she’s the college-age daughter who regales the group with her dubious decisions to catch a ride with some strangers a festival where she shelters under a car when more dreaded rains fall. Griffith is bright and funny at times the voice of reason in a room full of unreasonable adults. She calls out her parents unknowingly in a key lie which is central to the unraveling relationship with their friends. She also digs into the steak (yes, she’s a vegetarian) and drips the very rare au jus down her face and tunic. There’s more odd metaphor happening here with the food. The bloody steak, the roaster full of whole sweet potatoes…and the diners taunt themselves and each other with offerings. Props to Quincy Miracle’s property design and how the texture of a fully cooked potato manages to hold up on the tines of fork during one of Adele’s extended monologues.

The most compelling and appealing character onstage is Emma Schimminger’s lighting design. The view from the 27^th floor window is lovely, and while the house lights are mostly up for the performance, she achieves bright and less light moments on the stage. Spoiler alert: some rain does actually fall on stage and if  you’re prone to first row seating as a Theatre Companion often is, be prepared for a light sprinkle.

I applaud Alleyway’s commitment to new and interesting works and Chris J Handley’s pristine and precise direction of these often complex productions. This one, alas, was a bit of a struggle for me. The constant on-stage narrator (I know, we’ve seen it before) made the uncomfortable mood more broken at times. I struggled to really “like” the four adult characters and found the amount of dialogue in this 100-minute show too wordy and repetitive at times. The dripping au jus and smashing of potatoes was just a little too ‘out there’ for me, even when I tried to suspend reality and immerse myself in their futuristic cannibalism-survivalist mentality. Still, it’s important to see these shows to experience what’s new and emerging/

Things With Friends runs to April 26: find details at www.alleyway.com.