New Workshop has shown an almost unique flexibility among its off-Broadway brethren when it comes to extreme makeovers. From the vertiginous operating-theater setup of “A Number” to the encompassing Sheetrock drabness of its “Hedda Gabler” revival, no wall, seat, or structure is safe on East Fourth Street.

“The Black Eyed,” Betty Shamieh’s labored new drama about martyrdom and embattled femininity, may fall well shy of these works from a dramatic perspective. But simply by extending a few low-hanging sheets of plywood beyond the stage area as a sort of trick ceiling, set designer Paul Steinberg has created a purgatory that entombs nearly the entire audience, rendering them silent cohabitants. “Hell is other people,” Sartre famously wrote in “No Exit,” a clear inspiration (along with Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls”) to the playwright; purgatory, Mr. Steinberg and director Sam Gold make clear, is other people plus us.

Ms. Shamieh trots out the dependable if overused gambit of conflict through bricolage, of introducing characters from disparate eras, then watching the postmodernist sparks fly. Four very different Palestinian women find themselves in a spare antechamber of the afterlife — possibly heaven or hell, but limbo is the consensus decision. A door separates this room and the (unseen) home of every martyr in history.

“Women of all different cultures and all centuries have come here to look for their martyrs,” explains the modern day figure Aiesha (Aysan Celik), who claims firsthand knowledge of what transpires on the other side. The three new arrivals also know a thing or two about martyrdom: Delilah (Emily Swallow) and her scissors set in motion the actions that resulted in Samson crushing a temple full of Philistines along with himself, while Tamam (Lameece Issaq) saw the Crusades transform her brother into a mass murderer.

Their compatriot, an unnamed Arab-American architect (Jeanine Serralles), forges her connection a bit more tenuously; her actions, like Aiesha’s, stem from much more recent events. There’s a reason Aiesha knows as much as she does about the next room — and a reason she remains just outside it.

The characters maintain an uneasy relativism about political violence: “Some of our martyrs were mistaken, cruel, even insane. But … they are not worse than the worst of them that are here.” The more modern strains of martyrdom are discussed at some length, including numerous passages delivered by three or four women in unison, a device Mr. Gold employs more fluidly than most directors. Ms. Shamieh, however, occasionally sacrifices internal logic to bolster these discussions. (How is it that Delilah and Tamam know more about current events than Aiesha, who was born centuries later?)

Ms. Shamieh has fun inverting Muslim stereotypes, as when Aiesha’s companions belittle her fantasy of 100 male virgins (as opposed to the usual houri fantasy) by pointing out that she could have found plenty of those back on Earth. And the playwright’s penchant for aphorisms results in the occasional clear-eyed observation, particularly when she is addressing differences in gender: “Arrogance is confidence that is snuffed out, resuscitated, and is never quite the same again,” the women declare, and this equation is clearly geared toward the plight of women.

But these silver-tongued witticisms ultimately bog down “The Black Eyed,” giving it an unwelcome glibness and flattening the very different historical circumstances that engender each woman’s actions. As a result, all four performances struggle to attain a consistent tone, although Ms. Issaq’s empathic Tamam comes closest. And an elaborate series of fantasy sequences involving the Arab-American architect seem to exist largely as a smoke screen to obscure the paltriness of her sufferings in comparison to those of her companions.

New York Theatre Workshop received a black eye of its own in 2006 when it abruptly shelved plans to produce “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” based on the life of an American woman who was killed under murky circumstances while protesting the use of an armored Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. If the critical tongue-lashing the theatre received after the hasty cancellation spurs it to program a broader array of political theatre, so much the better. (It bears mentioning that Ms. Shamieh and the workshop began collaborating on this play well before 2006.) But recasting the idea of martyrdom as a vehicle for examining gender solidarity requires a defter analysis of both the sexual and the political ramifications than “The Black Eyed” offers.

Until August 19 (79 E. 4th St., between Second Avenue and Bowery, 212-239-6200).