The best moment of “Spirit” is a demonstration on how to bounce back when an actor goes toes-up. After one of the performers suffers a nasty “death,” two others manipulate him like a puppet, prying his eyes open and wobbling his arm in a limp wave. The bit goes on a bit too long – long enough to thoroughly creep out the audience and establish a point. Even in the midst of carnage, men can’t escape their old routines.

On a steeply raked wooden platform, rising at a better than 45-degree angle from the stage, three men cavort like boys, argue like men, and fight like mad dogs. Three members of Improbable (formerly the Improbable Theatre), Guy Dartnell, Lee Simpson, and Phelim McDermott, let their discussion of “conflict” range far and wide. Though they start with political allegories, they end up reenacting scuffles that sound suspiciously personal.

At first, they try to tell us about three iconic brothers, all bakers, who must send one of their own off to war. The youngest, consumed with dreams of flying, enlists to drop bombs. His guilt (he wipes out a tiny cardboard city) and subsequent death seems to spur each actor into actual reminiscences – always about fathers, mortality, and airplanes. But even these painful memories irritate differences between the actors. Soon Mr. Simpson is preening over his reviews while Mr. McDermott gets stroppy about the others’ inability to act.

The wedge of stage riddled with trapdoors – seemingly designed by Whack-a-Mole – allows the actors to pop out in nearly any spot. These characters/actors seem to be most self-involved when they are most deeply buried. If only their heads emerge from the platform, their concern may well be selfish. But if they can extract themselves, or better yet step off the cake-slice stage, they may have a shot at perspective and healing.

Improbable had its highest-profile success with “Shockheaded Peter,” a show that seems far removed from their current concerns. “Peter” was a luscious bit of guignol that played with Victorian horror like a new toy. But that show had a sharp, clever script. And while this “Spirit” is willing, the flesh of its script is weak.

This is most apparent in two long, unscripted scenes that force the actors into improvisation. This is actor masochism: If they don’t come up with something to say, they will have to sit in silence for 10 minutes. The night I was there, Lee Simpson started by admiring the “Spanish version of Don Quixote” he could hear from an adjoining theater, then wandered into an ode to the bluebottle fly. That these two scenes absorb and entertain us are a measure of the three men’s ease and sharp wit. That these are the best scenes of the night isn’t a compliment for the script.

Rumors of rifts among the Improbable company and a conflict-resolution specialist as a co-director (Arlene Audergon) go a long way toward explaining the occasionally cloying “self-help” atmosphere. Bully for them: A piece about mending fences seems to have been cathartic for its participants. And, for a counseling session, it’s relatively delightful. But as entertainment, despite the precipitate slope of their stage, they never get up quite enough momentum.

Until October 9 (79 E. 4th Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue, 212-780-9037).