The poet Ric Masten once wrote, whether as fact or myth, that all those committing suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge have jumped not out toward the ocean but back toward the city. The implication is that suicide is a cry for attention and a leap back toward the very life that it denies.

Maybe that's what drives Ken, Tobias, Phera and Gretchen in Matt Smith's new play, "Bridge Club," being given its premiere by Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre. The four keep gathering on the bridge that is apparently the site of their past or future suicides.

Maybe they gather there in hopes that they'll learn why they did what they did, or that someone will stop them if they haven't done it yet. Maybe their gathering is just such a plea for attention or love, either from those who have abused them or each other.

They better not look to get that love from the audience -- not when they prove so obscure, repetitive and slow about it. There were times in the play's 2¹/₂ hours when I could have willingly urged them to jump rather than wallow in their vague, ongoing anguish.

From the start, we suspect this is not real life or real, living people. They feel like abstractions or symbols -- witness the exaggeration of their talk or how they hide from each other in full view. Are they in some sort of limbo? Are they all dead? Dreaming? Caught in a flashback or a premonition?

Eventually I think we deduce, as I say, that all are suicides, whether recent or to come -- that's why they're drawn to the bridge, which itself feels less like a real place than a metaphysical situation. That's the only sense I can make of its repeatedly described geography, where the other side is for the drunks and run-of-the-mill depressives, while this side is reserved for the refined and suicidally sensitive.

But try as I do to understand their anguish, it continues to seem an authorial concept floating in a void. Pity the actors, who have to portray generalized states of being rather than concrete acts, which are, after all, the heart of acting. I doubt these actors have any definite idea of what their characters are pursuing, but if they do, they should share it with the audience.

I know, it sounds something like "No Exit" or "Waiting for Godot" or even "The Zoo Story." Granted, that sort of stasis can be done on stage, but it's difficult.

Finally, a purpose does emerge, focused on young Ken. His lamentation has been the most superficial -- he ran out of milk for his cereal! -- and his complaints have been the whiniest. Obviously, he is repressing something awful, and finally the play gathers itself around the central action of getting Ken to open up.

So when he does, well into the evening's third hour, there is a quickening of interest. His story is the strongest thing in the play, what with how long we've waited for it. Ostensibly a lament for death of a friend, it's obviously a displaced cry of pain about his own thwarted sexuality. If only we got there a half hour sooner.

Some of my irritation derives from Smith's dialogue, which can be clever but often seems more interested in showing off by dragging in odds and ends of philosophic observation. That's too bad, because he is a fluent writer of dialogue, with plenty of thoughts on serious issues.

Smith is a recent Duquesne University grad now living in Seattle. He's had a number of one-acts staged by the New Works Festival, and Duquesne (where director John E. Lane Jr., presides over the theater program) has staged several more, plus his full-length "Cork Dinosaur." He is an interesting playwright in progress.

The actors do remarkably well with a text make fiendishly difficult by its repetitions. Jeanine Foster-McKelvia is solid as the maternal Gretchen and Stephanie Figer is wistful and wan as the abused Phera. T.R. Butler has to suffer through all Tobias' repetitions, but he retains a quiet center that makes him interesting.

There's none of that occasional subtlety in Ken, at least nothing that Grant Bojarski finds by shouting and rarely listening to the other characters. This Ken is the kind of guy who stands six inches in front of you yelling but is too caught up in himself to realize what he's doing.

It's hard to isolate the contribution of a director, especially with a new play where there is no performance track record. Lane doesn't solve the problems I see, but he may have solved others. And he does provide some nice images, like the final one of Ken, kneeling at the bridge rail like a hopeful religious communicant.

But I was ready to like any image that seemed the final one.

Note that thanks to sponsorship, there is no admission charge. And if you go on Saturday, you can also park free in the parking garage in the same building.