‘Marriage’ not your typical Mamet

But the characters in “Boston Marriage’’ do share with their less genteel cousins in Mamet Country a belief in the sheer power of language as a means of mastery over others. What they do not share, even though New Rep showcases several solid performances and some entertaining flashes of Mamet’s scabrous wit, is a consistently compelling reason to watch and listen to them.

The title is drawn from a turn-of-the-century term used to describe unmarried women who lived together and was often a euphemism for lesbian lovers. When we first see Anna (Debra Wise) and Claire (Jennie Israel) in the former’s drawing room, there is a barbed formality to their exchanges that suggests a lot of shared history has given way to an awkward present.

Though Anna is the mistress of a rich man and has the expensive emerald necklace to prove it, she is plainly still in love with Claire. But Claire is enamored of a young woman. In fact, she is cheekily seeking to arrange a tryst with her new paramour at, of all places, Anna’s house. When the young woman arrives at the house (this action occurs offstage), unforeseen complications arise.

Further complications, and comic relief, are generated by Catherine (Melissa Baroni), a perpetually flustered Scottish maid who doesn’t so much enter rooms as totter into them. In a running gag that generates some of the play’s most amusing moments, Anna assumes Catherine is Irish and, to Catherine’s growing fury, cannot be dissuaded from that assumption. Nor does Catherine much like the fact that Anna keeps calling her “Nora’’ and “Molly’’ while heaping insults on her tousled head and on her alleged Irish heritage.