Ah, the pitfalls of growing up in the Mamet age. Playwrights in search of their own distinctive voice often wind up regurgitating something they once heard in “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.” Every other word is a “what?” or an expletive, and sentences never have both subject and verb. A script by one of Mr. Mamet’s disciples is as vertical as a grocery list – they never write anything long enough to even approach that right-hand margin.

And it can work. Sometimes the staccato beats and abrupt phrases make their point. Men don’t express, they sputter and explode. A woman and a man “communicating” is, more often than not, a cacophony of badly matched rhythms. But in Michael John Garces’s “Acts of Mercy,” now at the Rattlestick, the fits-and-starts style only works in, um, fits and starts. Aside from some very funny scenes in the middle, the rest of the play is grating and overlong. For long sections, watching “Acts” is like trying to read in a car while riding the brakes – every lurch will make you car-sick.

The various bad communicators in Mr. Garces’s play are all vaguely related. Caring Eladio (Andres Munar) and cocky Jaime (Bryant Mason) have the same father, Nestor (Jose Febus), though they have different mothers. Nestor, dying and seemingly as big a bastard as he ever was, alternately drives Eladio from him, and clutches him close – clearly, though, he only longs for Jaime. Another half-brother, T.J. (Tommy Schrider), hangs around, though his relation is through Eladio’s dead mother, and T.J.’s ex-girlfriend Arabella (Veronica Cruz) works on sleeping her way through the entire crowd (Nestor included).

At a birthday celebration for their clueless cousin Ricky (Ivan Quintanilla), T.J.’s natural penchant for violent ribbing turns completely pathological, spurring a fight between Eladio and Ricky. Eladio, despite some terrible decisions, is clearly the sweetheart of this gang, and he always seems to be the guy who takes the punch. When a stripper with a heart of gold (the incredible Jenny Maguire), tries to clean him up, though, he too reacts with inappropriate violence. By the time he makes it home to watch his father die and unite with the utterly defective Arabella, Eladio has learned some valuable lessons about risk and love. Or at least we assume he must have, since all the plot points roll into line like obedient ducks without any actual revelations taking place.

An insert in the program for “Acts of Mercy” labels the play’s scenes, naming each as a type of religio-social ministry. The relationships between the titles (“drink to the thirsty” and “counsel to the doubtful”) and their scenes seem largely sarcastic – during the “drink” sequence, three guys go to a strip club and get smashed, and the fellow who seems most “doubtful” may have accidentally strangled his bedridden father to death.

Kicking things off with a little song (naturally called “vespers”), the seedy, pseudo-bad-boy “Acts” wants to show us how real people actually tend to one another. No dog collars, no anointing of oils, just horribly damaged people trying to make their ripped edges line up.

Without that program insert, though, we wouldn’t know what Mr. Garces is up to. Apart from this Xeroxed page and a large, neon cross that hovers over the stage, Mr. Garces keeps any religious commentary way undercover. In fact, he may do too good a job of masking his piece’s allegorical intentions. That, coupled with a herky-jerky dialogue style and a wildly unearned, sentimental ending, means the evening feels like flipping between a soap opera and porn – without the guilty pleasures of either.

Director Gia Forakis deserves credit for getting her actors to perform at pace and, in some cases, naked. Some how she talked Ms. Cruz and Mr. Mason into some horribly exposed positions as well as some embarrassingly graphic sex.

Ms. Cruz’s physical bravery aside, she seems to be the actor least comfortable with the Garces style. The others, particularly Messrs. Quintanilla and Munar, manage to invest the minimalist dialogue with a wealth of inflections. Ms. Cruz, however, winds up on a single, aggressive note, one that is very difficult to listen to for long.

Of course, it may not be her fault. Though Mr. Garces seems to understand men – the all-male scenes far outstrip those scenes involving women – the women behave either like angels or demons. Rarely do they behave like women.

Still, Mr. Garces occasionally strikes gold. Writing for men, capturing their bravado and vulnerability, he mines an occasionally rich vein of dialogue and character. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for another play before he brings his finds to the surface. With another plot and another woman, we’ll be able to sit through both “Acts” without squirming.

Until March 19 (224 Waverly Place, between Perry and W.11th Streets, 212-868-4444).