THEATER REVIEW“Two Drink Minimum”

Through Nov. 18. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $15-$33. Theatrical Outfit (the Balzer Theater at Herren’s), 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 1-877-725-8849. theatricaloutfit.org.

Bottom line: A labored labor of love.

There’s no doubt that Theatrical Outfit owes a great debt of gratitude to William Balzer. The retired UPS executive is a longtime member of the theater’s board of trustees and he is among its biggest financial contributors, according to a list of them that runs in the back of the programs for each of its shows.

Most magnanimously, in 2002 Balzer bought the old Herren’s restaurant building in downtown Atlanta and donated it to the 35-year-old company, which, under the leadership of artistic director Tom Key, renovated and reopened it in 2004 as the Balzer Theater at Herren’s, where things have been going strong ever since.

Despite all of his philanthropic good deeds, playwriting isn’t Balzer’s forte, if his debut comedy “Two Drink Minimum” is any indication. Perhaps because of those charitable actions, though, the play is getting a full-blown Outfit production nonetheless.

The show tells the autobiographical story of Balzer’s fractious relationship with his mother, Mary B., centering around their weekly telephone conversations. An uncharacteristically dull William S. Murphey enacts the role of Bill Balzer. As he puts it to the audience, “I needed the first drink to give me the courage to make the call (and) the second to give me the courage not to hang up.”

Indeed. While Mary B. is described as “feisty,” that term suggests an ingratiating spirit that never comes across in the dour performance of Susan Shalhoub Larkin, who portrays the part as a one-note pain in the neck. “I love her as a mother-in-law but I don’t like her as a person,” admits Bill’s wife, Peg (Wendy Melkonian).

Neither do we, for that matter, essentially undermining our emotional investment in the play. It’s of little wonder that Bill might finally question the futility of his efforts to be a dutiful son, when Mary B. never changes in any dramatic way. There’s an affectionate sentimentality that goes with the territory in such real-life remembrances of things past, but “Two Drink Minimum” rarely earns it on its own accord.

The show is rather sluggishly staged by Scott Warren, who is best known as an actor and whose previous credits directing zany comedies at Dad’s Garage wouldn’t seem to make him an obvious choice to helm this sort of intimate character study. Among his nicer stylistic touches are scenes incorporating newsreel projections or shadow puppets; much less effective is a lengthy and tedious childhood flashback played with actual puppets.

That plays often serve a therapeutic purpose for their writers doesn’t always translate into a universally meaningful experience for an audience. To the casual observer of “Two Drink Minimum,” the only redeeming quality about Mary B. may be that she somehow raised a son as successful and generous as Bill Balzer – with all due respect, a better patron of the arts than practitioner.