Creep isn’t interesting

An unpleasant play can still be satisfying. But an aimless one? Not so much. “The Spoils,” a modern Manhattan dramedy with a mean streak wider than Broadway, falls, alas, into both categories.

As in “The Revisionist,” author and “The Social Network” star Jesse Eisenberg’s earlier twohander with Vanessa Redgrave, Eisenberg plays an obnoxious, motor-mouthed, pot-smoking wannabe artist who treats people like dirt. Or, better, like crap. Ben (Eisenberg), a warped and spoiled rich kid living off his parents’ money in an enviable New York apartment, is obsessed with the stuff.

Only his improbably forgiving roommate Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar, of “The Big Bang Theory”) can stand him. Kalyan doesn’t carp when Ben ruins his romantic night at home with his girlfriend Reshma (Annapurna Sriram), an ambitious Indian-American doctor.

That’s a hint of Ben’s bad behavior. When he learns that his childhood friend Sarah (Erin Darke, always believable) is going to marry Ted (Michael Zegen), another kid from the past who’s a hotshot Wall Streeter, Ben sets out to spoil that, too.

Antiheroes can be intriguing, as “Mad Men” and “House of Cards” have shown. But Ben’s not fascinating. Other characters are more interesting — and wonderfully acted under Scott Elliott’s direction for this New Group production. Sarah’s complicated take on her job teaching kids with criminal pasts and Reshma’s jones for “working on dead people” make you want to know more about them.

But Ben? Who cares. A lastditch effort to humanize and redeem him doesn’t do it. As a playwright Eisenberg is stuck in a groove going round and round — there’s no point in that.