The longer and louder the party, the more mess to clean up afterward.

That’s the situation two soon-to-be-40-something rock musicians face in “Everythings Turning Into Beautiful,” Seth Zvi Rosenfeld’s heartfelt but fairly obvious romantic drama with the New Group. Not even committed, empathic performances by Daphne Rubin-Vega and Malik Yoba can resuscitate the schematic plotting and predictable denouement of this indie-rock “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which features two more bruised souls taking a long look at each other as the brass ring recedes into the distance.

The action unfolds in the Chelsea apartment of Brenda (Ms. Rubin-Vega), a one-hit wonder who has been reduced to writing jingles. (Beowulf Boritt’s scrappy-chic set design comes complete with scores of her old mimeographed concert fliers.) One of Brenda’s collaborators, a perpetually up-and-coming musician named Sam (Mr. Yoba), swings by late one Christmas Eve for a visit that’s equal parts jam session and booty call.

Though their body language and dialogue make it clear that the two have known each other for some time, Mr. Rosenfeld and director Carl Forsman see to it that the exact level of that intimacy remains murky. (Brenda halfheartedly maintains a pretense that she’s got a guy in her bedroom.) But this encounter evolves the way situations typically do between two highly photogenic, creative types at 2 o’clock in the morning.The result threatens to upend their professional and personal relationship until everything turns into …well, you know.

Mr. Rosenfeld doesn’t let either character off the hook. Brenda is neurotic and unrelenting in her emotional demands; Sam is withholding and a bit promiscuous. But they share, in addition to a passion for music, a weakness for too much drama and not enough morning-after resiliency. (And not enough punctuation marks, as evidenced by that “Everythings” in the title.) Ambition and regret and a lot of nights on the road congeal into a seemingly irreparable situation in which, as Brenda describes it, “you try to back your way into some kind of normal life and nothing fits.”

Music, unsurprisingly, supplies the most dependable form of interaction between the two. Mr. Yoba and Ms. Rubin-Vega, both songwriters as well as actors, intersperse bits of dialogue among their sung lyrics and pounded-out rhythms with convincing ease. And while Ms. Rubin-Vega still exudes the carnality she showed 10 years ago in “Rent,”she scales back her wailing alto to match Mr. Yoba’s gentle but surprisingly robust blues-rock vocals.

Jimmie James, whose low-key songs hail from the Robert Cray school of rueful blues/soul, penned these collaborations.The melodies are spare but intriguing, the lyrics denser and less impressive. (“Her dance is time with lights thrown on. / She brings me flowers in every dawn.”) The leaden quality of these lyrics is not immediately apparent, though largely because Mr. Yoba and Ms. Rubin-Vega don’t just sing them but also act them out, which includes really listening to each other’s performances.

Still, much of the dialogue and lyrics are just too skeletal to work as the glue holding together Brenda and Sam. She rebuffs his sexual advances by saying, “I don’t want to ruin something that’s great,” but Messrs. Rosenfeld and James haven’t yet convinced us of the pre-existing bond between them. Based on what we’ve heard, the stakes aren’t that high.

Mr. Rosenfeld creates a plausible picture of life just a few steps from the margins.And he has a sharp ear for the disconnect between his characters’ accumulated responsibilities and the adolescent skittishness they are only now beginning to shed: “The good part about you having kids is let’s say we were together and stuff and we lived together or whatever.”

But that sure-footedness eludes him as Sam and Brenda’s thrusts and feints fall into rhythms familiar to romantic dramas. A panic attack by one of the characters rings false, and their teeth-gnashing grows tired quickly. (Within the first 10 minutes, one character refers to the other as “tortured,” without a hint of irony.) Particularly in Act II, Mr. Forsman allows the connective thread to waft away, and the play turns into a series of digestible scenes rather than the ebbs and flows of an actual late-night conversation.

Both performers display commendable willingness to present their characters’ less endearing qualities without apology or explanation. Ms. Rubin-Vega lends Brenda a guarded hostility that, while providing a degree of internal strength, clearly has turned many of her fears into self-fulfilling prophecies. And Mr. Yoba is charming and sad as a gentle giant who’s only now realizing the consequences of his powers of persuasion.

One genuinely gets the sense that these two scarred musicians know each other better by the end of “Everythings Turning Into Beautiful.” Unfortunately, the audience never really gets to share that newfound intimacy. The record is too scratchy and too familiar.

Until September 2 (410 W.42nd St., between Ninth and Tenth avenues, 212-279-4200).