It’s far too early to say with any confidence that “Losing Louie” will be the worst play of the season. Given Manhattan Theatre Club’s woeful track record at its Biltmore Theatre space (“After the Night and the Music,” “Drowning Crow,” a tin-eared revival of “Absurd Person Singular”), Simon Mendes da Costa’s numbing exercise in familial hostility may even see some in-house competition before the year is out. But it sets the bar mighty low.

This tawdry caper, which actually had some recent success in London, splices together two generations of the Ellis clan as they enter and exit the master bedroom of the family’s Westchester home. (Think of it as “‘Arcadia’ for Dummies.”) In the 1960s passages, it belongs to Louie Ellis (Scott Cohen) and his pregnant wife, Bobbie (Rebecca Creskoff). His mistress, Bella (Jama Williamson), lives under their roof as a boarder and is expecting a kid of her own, which allows for various melodramatic complications. Unseen but very much present in Louie and Bobbie’s thoughts is Tony, their increasingly traumatized 6-year-old son.

The years have not been much kinder to Tony, based on the grown-up version (Mark Linn-Baker) we meet in the present-day segments, set on the day of Louie’s funeral. He and his grasping wife, Sheila (Michele Pawk), live in the abashed shadow of his younger brother, a successful lawyer named Reggie (Matthew Arkin), and his similarly well-appointed wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Kalember). All the naughty secrets that little Tony amassed gradually spill out, as Mr. da Costa cross-cuts between past and present to little dramatic effect.

The whole squalid affair comes complete with comic bits devoted to oral sex, vomiting, and genital piercing (although not all at the same time, mercifully), not to mention an undercooked overlay of Jewish self-identity angst and a fateful arm-wrestling match. The earlier material is slightly better written — parts sound as if they could have come from a 1960s playwright deep under the sway of a young Philip Roth — while the contemporary sequences display stronger performances. (All three of the actors in the 1960s sequences are making their Broadway debuts.)

Director Jerry Zaks, who has done wonders with staging farces like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Lend Me a Tenor,” handles Mr. da Costa’s door-slamming logistics capably but does little to invigorate the piece’s overall lethargy. He sprints past the few clever moments and screeches to a halt for a steady stream of “Dad always liked you best!” confrontations. Ms. Kalember and Ms. Pawk manage to make at least a handful of their lines sound funny, and Mr. Linn-Baker convincingly conveys the resentments churning behind his basset-hound features, but the deck is stacked pretty heavily against any performer saddled with material like this:

SHEILA: And the sun is 93 million miles from the Earth. Which means we don’t see the sun now, but as it was eight minutes ago. And therefore also because of the time it takes for light to travel from you to me, must mean that I’m seeing you in the past.

TONY: Do I have any more hair?

If that’s the sort of sparkling banter you crave, you’ve got another eight weeks to sample it, which is the really galling thing about “Losing Louie.” Broadway has a total of four subscriber-based spaces — the Roundabout’s two theaters, Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont, and the Biltmore. Tom Stoppard’s mammoth “Coast of Utopia” is putting down anchor at the Beaumont for the entire season, while the Roundabout has four revivals in the works. The Biltmore, meanwhile, will follow this with a revival of Brian Friel’s marvelous play “Translations.” (Both the Roundabout and MTC have a slot yet to be announced, and to be fair, the Roundabout is primarily known for its revivals.)

So, to recap, those four theaters — the only ones that, thanks to their subscriber base, can guarantee a legitimate Broadway run for a new play that may otherwise be a tough sell — have on tap a towering, years-in-the-making epic by the most intellectually vibrant playwright alive … and “Losing Louie.” And, since the first part of “Utopia” doesn’t begin previews until next week, this exhausted retread and “Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!” are the only new plays currently on Broadway.

I don’t claim to understand the deliberations and variables involved in programming a season, but I do know this: Broadway can — and must — do a better job of finding and producing new plays. “Losing Louie” isn’t just taking up two hours of your time. It’s taking up space.

Until December 10 (261 W.47th St.,between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).