St. Ann’s Warehouse, the go-to house for hipster theater, has kicked its own reputation up a notch with Grzegorz Jarzyna’s “Risk Everything.” This is theater so groovy, so absolutely bleeding-edge, that the cops came by to make sure we were all right. Staged in front of a lobby’s glass wall, facing out into the Dumbo night, cars and neighbors slowed down to get a glimpse of the action inside. Is that a naked man in a dog collar grabbing that woman? Surely that fellow covered in blood is all right? The play, a black comedy by George F. Walker, provides plenty of queasy humor – but it was that confused guy walking his dog in the back that made it absolutely priceless.

As we’ve all learned from attempts at the funky chicken, you can’t fake cool. You’ve got it or not. Luckily, Mr. Jarzyna’s audacious theater company TR Warszawa has it in a hammerlock. Earlier this season, another director at TR Warszawa, Krzysztof Warlikowski, got so cool with “The Dybbuk” at BAM that you could have accused him of being arch. But Mr. Jarzyna, plunges into his material up to the elbow, employing a collage style he calls “trash.” If an actor can’t express herself, a screaming riff from Slayer says it for her. James Bond’s theme underscores a loser turning on the TV, and the “Kill Bill” soundtrack is on repeat. It’s pop-culture overload, and the wasted, rotted-through people onstage reflect glamour from its klieg lights.

Mr. Walker’s “Suburban Motel” sextet takes as its heroes the seriously down-and-out. In “Risk Everything,” gambling-addicted, alcohol addled Carol (Aleksandra Konieczna) tries to put one over on local hood Steamboat Jeffries. Stealing from Steamboat hasn’t been going so well – she has been beaten within an inch of her life, and her daughter Lucy (called Denise in Mr. Walker’s original) wants her to give up her stash. Lucy’s husband RJ (a baby-faced Jan Drawnel) would rather watch TV than get involved, and he and Lucy do dream of going straight. Still, there’s family honor to be upheld. When Carol threatens to call the police, Lucy wails “Our family hasn’t gone to the cops in three generations!”

Mr. Jarzyna takes a play about risk and gambles on it. He throws young student actors together with Ms. Konieczna, one of the stars in his company. He invites randomness into his production, including the always-tricky element of street parking. His actors, all of them Polish speakers, come up with phrases in English, with bizarre effects. But the chances pay off. He and his astonishing designer Magdelena Musial roll the dice with decay, and come up with an icky kind of beauty.

The real jackpot, though, is Ms. Konieczna’s performance. Carol has the splendor of someone completely in decline. Tottering about in heels and fishnets, clawing at herself on the toilet and flinging the paper at her son-in-law, Ms. Konieczna gives her destruction a charisma all its own. Explosives figure late in the play – but this performance is the real ticking time bomb.

***

Theater for a New Audience (TFANA to its friends) has the best seasons – on paper, that is. Their programming is intelligent, audacious, even newsworthy, like when they did both Frederick Wiseman’s “The Last Letter” and W.S. Gilbert’s “Engaged” in one year. They get solid directors, sexy spaces (their “Pericles” swanned around at BAM), and the cream of the local acting crop. So why are the shows so disappointing? Their most recent effort, “Svejk,” comes off like a deflated souffle – all the ingredients look right, but someone must have banged the oven door.

Adapted from the novel “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Czech soldier/author Jaroslav Hasek, “Svejk” tells the story of the village clown going off to the Great War. Declared an “official idiot” by army doctors, he nevertheless finds his way into military service, where his bumbling seems to almost assure his survival. Like “Mother Courage” in reverse, this fighter couldn’t be less world weary or wise, but the points he makes are still Brechtian. War’s absurdity is nicely exposed when an idiot sings its praises.

Dalia Ibelhauptaite directs a New York Dream Team: Stephen Spinella plays the hapless Svejk, Max Casella is the helpful “Footnote” who pops up with explanations whenever necessary, and the ensemble runneth over with actors like Paul Lazar, Peter McRobbie, and Richard Poe. Speaking of Brecht, he got some of his best ideas from Hasek. So adaptor Colin Teevan returns the favor by inserting faux-Weill songs and lots of meta-theatrical narrators into the mix. Actors even play the animals, which lets Chip Persons’ bad kitty steal a scene right out from under Mr. Spinella.

Gideon Davey has designed a handsome, doodled-on set, seemingly tucked into the margin of Hasek’s yellowed manuscript. Typewriters and a giant clock have exploded nearby, and bits of them remain embedded in the shredded paper. Mr. Teevan has done his best to make the narrative just as incendiary, but the problems of a novel on stage still dog his efforts. He can’t escape a relentless, episodic quality, though things do look up once Svejk finds his straight-man, Lieutenant Lukacs (Ryan Shively). Mr. Shively does delicate things with exasperation – it’s nice to know you’re not the only one who wants to strangle Svejk.

Everything you see and hear has been competently produced, and still the show doesn’t work. The piece needs electrification, it needs some kind of diabolical current to get it moving. The novel’s mockery was born in anger and frustration and fear, so a calm, contained production just doesn’t do it justice. This production knows which buttons are still relevant, from blind faith in war-mongering leaders to a misplaced trust in police. It would be nice to see them really hit those buttons, maybe even give ’em a good smack. Right now at the Duke, they just depress them (and us) gently.

“Risk Everything” until November 21 (38 Water Street, at Dock Street, Brooklyn, 718-254-8779).
“Svejk” until December 12 (229 W. 42 Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 646-223-3042).