With so many pieces in so many venues, and with so many varying accounts of which ones are worth the time, the idea of devoting any time to a repeat viewing at the Fringe Festival seems indulgent, almost unsporting. but I’m inclined to do something I’ve never done in 11 years of Fringe-going: I’m seriously considering skipping one of the other 175 or so as-yet-unseen Fringe offerings in order to revisit “Naked in a Fishbowl.” I have a strong hunch it will be just as compelling the second time, and i know it will be completely different.

“Fishbowl,” you see, is an evening of improv. But not the show-offy sort where audience members goad the actors into dauntingly arcane assignments (“Do mock Ibsen! Like a musical! With Humphrey Bogart and an inuit! And have one of them say ‘Fluffernutter!'”) instead, four talented actresses have spent the last several years developing what appear to be a flawed, distractible, cliquish, loving quartet of characters, four friends whose lives move forward with — and only with — each production. The performers are armed with nothing more than an agreed-upon opening setting — and, of course, the collective history they have assembled along the way.

In this particular episode, they had assembled at St. Vincent’s hospital to visit Tiffany dawn, a universally disliked acquaintance. Two of the women, Sara and Jean (Katharine Heller and Lynne Rosenberg, respectively), are itching to get down to a Brooklyn bar for Trivia night. Bonnie (Lauren Seikaly), the most financially secure of the four, musters up the most sympathy for the incapacitated co-worker. And Sophie (Brenna Palughi), who used to be married to Tiffany dawn’s current husband, is preparing to move to Italy in a few weeks, upending the allegiances and power dynamics within the group.

As with any improv show, the actors realize a bit too late that some topics are more interesting than others. (Ms. heller and the sublime Ms. Rosenberg have an impressive batting average, though.) And sometimes they start talking at the same time, only to stop awkwardly at the same time.

But you know what? That happens with real conversations and real friends, too. because the women are able to focus on their evolving emotions, instead of the usual “Douglas Sirk in outer space!” Silliness, all four tap into plausible trains of thought that remain engrossing and often — but by no means always — very funny.

And when the hour is up, we haven’t watched an exercise in cleverness. We’ve watched a single chapter of what promises to be a sprawling, bawdy, mostly wonderful novel. The next chapter won’t be written until the audience is there to read it.

* * *

In an unnamed, war-ravaged region in Eastern Europe — Bosnia? Chechnya? — one of the few opportunities for employment can be found at the international War Crimes Commission, which is led by a dead-eyed diplomat named Karl (Patrick Melville, who has some of Dylan Baker’s monster-next-door charm). in Steven Fechter’s plodding drama “The Commission,” we see Karl interact first with Ivan (Zack Calhoon), a homesick patrol guard, and then Paula (Susan Ferrara), a married American expat; both scenes contain enough described and/or depicted atrocities to fill another folder at the titular organization.

Mr. Fechter, whose screenplay for the Kevin bacon film “The Woodsman” explored the devastating after-effects of sexual violence, revisits the theme here. Make that re-re-revisits: Whether during, before, or after the war, no one’s body is entirely safe in this benighted country. but these scenes, while individually possessing a gritty integrity, bleed into one another without even a rudimentary sense of structure or pacing. Plot threads are introduced and then dropped, culminating in a turgid flashback between ivan and his fiancée, Tulia (reyna de Corcy), the night before he heads off to war.

Tulia, as it happens, meets up with Paula in the play’s first scene, an encounter fraught with condescension and loathing. Again, the dynamics are worth learning more about; again, Mr. Fechter and his director, Sarah gurfield, dart on to the next set of atrocities without so much as a backward glance. While one would like to be grateful for the undigested morsels that surface now and again, it’s hard not to take to heart a folk saying that Tulia utters in that odd first scene: “A half-full glass means the wine is bad.”

* * *

If D.W. Griffith and the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki were to go on a three-day bender at Pee-wee’s Playhouse, they might emerge with something like “The Monkey Moo,” a bizarrely fascinating melodrama about an androgynous, love-struck monkey (Yoko Myoi).

Ms. Myoi and co-conceiver Kanako Hiyama, expanding upon traditional kuruma-ningyo puppetry, supplement the form’s half-size puppets with a cord of rope that envelops Moo in an ingenious, ever-changing game of cat’s cradle. but these whimsical visuals frequently muddy the narrative with a climax that comes far too abruptly.

All the while, a trio of musicians known as Zelda Pinwheel underscores Moo’s wordless travails with a burbling, stabbing, utterly hypnotic stream of neo-techno-retro-psychedelia. Your days of wondering what a kung fu battle between a monkey and a fork-wielding miniature human would sound like are over.

“Naked in a Fishbowl” until Sunday (15 Vandam St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues); “The Commission” until Saturday (220 E. 4th St., between avenues A and B), “The Monkey Moo” until Friday (38 Commerce St., between Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street). Call 212-279-4488 for all tickets.