LIVING FOR ‘THE SIMPSONS’

‘MR. BURNS’ TURNS A POST-APOCALYPTIC WORLD ON ITS POP-CULTURE HEAD

“Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play” is an argument for itself.

This is a story filled with pop-culture references about the essential nature of pop culture. Because the playwright, Anne Washburn, makes her case by looking at people’s relationships to “The Simpsons” in a post-apocalyptic America, the play may remind Houston audiences what it was like to see their first show or movie after the flood.

There is a commonality, after all, in how humans cope with catastrophe.

To watch children battling clowns in “It” after evacuating one’s home feels a bit ridiculous, sure. So is staging a live Simpsons rerun in a world without electricity. Yet, the act of reclaiming the cultural canon is precisely what makes this funny, observant and unexpectedly gleeful play at Obsidian Theater such a spot-on rumination on humanity’s hierarchy of needs.

In the first scene, a band of survivors huddle around a fire, hoping they’re far away enough from the nuclear meltdowns that are occurring all over the country after a majority of the population has died. The survivors have two primary objectives: to avoid nuclear sickness due to unmanned nuclear plants and to account for their loved ones.

But that’s not what brings joy to these people. They don’t like talking about the necessities. Instead, they are obsessing over quoting the entirety of “Cape Feare,” that episode of “The Simpsons” when Sideshow Bob tries to kill Bart Simpson. They nerd out over “Do the Right Thing,” “H.M.S. Pinafore” and both the 1962 movie “Cape Fear” and its 1991 remake.

At first, these discussions seem pointless compared to talking about which routes to take, what cities are safe, which nuclear plants have exploded and who might be alive. When civilization is at stake, nostalgia over television sure feels like a triviality. Not so for these survivors. The second act takes the idea of post-apocalyptic entertainment to a fascinating place, where in the near future an entire economy has formed around performing re-enactments of “Simpsons” episodes. You pay your share of lithium batteries and are transported to the pre-apocalyptic time, when “The Simpsons,” Britney Spears and the song “Uptown Funk” still existed.

The third act cranks Washburn’s hypothesis — that survivors will consume pop culture with zealous fervor because that is what reminds them of normalcy — to an unexpectedly delightful level, but the concept of the entire act is so surprising I’d rather keep the description vague. It is, in short, a final manifestation of “The Simpsons” live rerun economy, when the art form has matured into something altogether different from simple recreation.

The cast livens up near the end of the third act. The rest of the production is a bit stiff and quiet, with actors still searching for ways on opening night to embody their characters and inject energy onto the stage. The cast just needs a bit more of everything — more speed, more drama, more range, more chemistry, more emotion. They need to err on the side of ridiculousness rather than precision, since the text allows for big, campy interpretations and the play wants energy more than anything else.

Sure, this is a low-budget, low-pricepoint night of entertainment, with aspects of sound, costume and scenic design showing signs of post-Harvey struggle (nearly all nonprofit theaters were hurt financially, due to both hits in audiences and donations). But because this is a show filled with newcomers operating on what appears to be a shoestring budget, let’s focus also on the gems: Reed Walker rapping as Nelson Muntz in the third-act musical. Kurt Bilanoski riling up the crowd as Mr. Burns. Jayden Key, singing as Bart Simpson, showing the kind of emotion you wouldn’t normally demand from that scene, yet here he is, kidnapped by an evil Mr. Burns on a treacherous riverboat, offering us a face of such sincere terror that makes us forget, if only for a moment, where and when we all are.

Washburn’s play might be zany and timehopping, but her vision of entertainment’s role in society is clear. She shows us that in dire times of life or death, humans tend to search deep within themselves for meaning, and that meaning almost never involves potable water or duct tape. That meaning comes from the kinds of seemingly silly and artificial constructs of a consumerism culture that we’ve been worshipping all our lives. There is actually nothing silly about quoting Mr. Burns from a specific episode of “The Simpsons,” especially not if that recollection, of a time that felt normal and thus safe, takes on the quality of religion.