The never-ending lure of a never-ending story

And that’s just the beginning. Grote juggles Osama bin Laden, Gustave Flaubert, and Alan Dershowitz in a network of interlocking unfinished stories that would have left Jorge Luis Borges scratching his head. (In fact, Borges makes an appearance here as well.) The play is getting its Boston premiere from Company One at the Boston Center for the Arts, in a production directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian that largely does justice to Grote’s dizzying mind games.

The setup is familiar: Scheherazade volunteers to become Shahriyar’s latest bride with the idea that she will avoid the fate of her predecessors (all beheaded the morning after so they cannot cuckold him) by getting him hooked on stories that never end. There’s the prince who’s besotted with his twin sister - but just as their father is about to bring that narrative to a climax, Scheherazade tells Shahriyar that he will have to hear a second tale before he can understand the first one.

Most of the rest of the play concerns Dahna and Alan, their story told in discrete parts, and not always the same way. (“Part IV, again, with variations,’’ our One-Eyed Arab host announces.) A length of blue silk that needs to be - but usually is not - as indigo as the desert sky at dusk has a continuing role; also prominent are the Crusades, a lamp with a djinn, instant text messaging, Sinbad’s discovery of Ikea, and a Manhattan enormity that dwarfs 9/11. One particular oddity is that Shahriyar talks like Norm Crosby: “Thank Alan!’’ he says, then, “um, Allah.’’