‘Zombie: The American,” Dystopic America in 2063 at Woolly Mammoth

There’s a literal-mindedness to much of playwright Robert O’Hara’s work that you have to accept on its own terms. If you accept what you see and hear, it eventually makes sense, in a weird, hard tough-love kind of way.

That was certainly the case for “Antebellum,” which mixed up strange-fruit racism from the Old South. That play was set in Atlanta when “Gone With the Wind” was released, and had tenuous and sexual connections to Hitler’s Nazis. It was not easy to take, or embrace — but it was always hair-raising and compelling.

With O’Hara’s latest play, “Zombie: The American,” directed with panache and style by Woolly Mammoth Theatre’s artistic director, Howard Schalwitz, there’s definitely a similar feel. The new play envisions, among many things, a dystopian America in 2063 after a flood decimates America, wiping out the Atlantic seaboard and turning the United States into a barely second-rate power.

O’Hara, a great master of mashing styles and themes, has approached his plot in the Jacobean manner of dark and bloody tragedies, set to contemporary pop art themes. His creation includes maps and written histories installed in the lobby that audience members are encouraged to add to as they see fit. On stage the U.S. has elected its first gay president, the Lord President Thom Valentine (Sean Meehan), complete with first gentleman Chase Valentine (James Seol).

And there is trouble, trouble, trouble in the land: a civil war threatens in the West; a new mineral is discovered, with the world drooling at the borders — especially the United States of Africa, which has sent uninvited peace-keepers, led by its Secretary General Abidemi (Dawn Ursula). There is treachery afoot: the first gentleman is having an affair with a staffer who is a clone; the defense secretary, General Alexander (Thomas Keegan), is plotting a coup; and the Dr. Strangelove-like Secretary of State, Jessica Bloom (played by the always wonderful Sarah Marshall), proposes that the president get help from, you guessed it, zombies.

Turns out a Council of Zombies, complete with a speaker, chairwoman and a minority whip, have been in the basement of the White House advising administrations for years. But the price per counsel session is a human body.

And there’s more — a peacekeeper has been murdered and the vice president is missing, that is, until Lord President receives a nasty package containing his head. Betrayal, murder and impending wars, both civil and external — what’s a Lord President to do?

The Secretary of State suggests sending in the zombies, a dicey proposition that could mean the destruction of what remains of the United States and perhaps the world.

OK, sure, it sounds like just about any zombie movie ever made. But after a while you start to occupy the world of the set —which is designed with verve and mobility by Misha Kachman — and includes a Mount Rushmore-based White House that plants itself with wobbly authority on the stage.

After a while, you get into the rhythm of O’Hara’s dialogue, which is more classical in style than today’s social-media-drenched excuse for language. Often the proceedings play like a mannered, stylized reality show that ratchets up the tension to the popping point, or “The Nightly News with Brian Williams.”

The cast dives into this with a relish resembling a zombie lunch hour. Most effective, if not most dramatic, is the work of Meehan as the Lord President (the country adopted British-style titles as part of a deal with England to help save it from itself). Meehan seems addled, befuddled, seething, betwitched, bottomed and bewildered. He makes the Lord President’s confusion seem like a form of sanity when everyone else has lost theirs. Increasingly frustrated and angry, he tries to do the right thing, if only he knew what it was.

Sarah Marshall delivers another one of her coolly insane characters, contemplating apocalyptical matters with smooth aplomb. Dawn Ursula is, as always, in something of a royal fever, dominating the stage with merely her entrance.

But the key to all of this is O’Hara and his gift for mashing up matters. His style of language keeps you aware he has something serious on his mind, even as you are ghoulishly entertained. And it is funny: faced with a payment of a clone, the zombies are outraged, insisting, “We are not vegetarians!”

For much of it O’Hara stays poised on the tightrope of total absurdity, the juggling of pop-culture themes (like zombies, the Tea Party and same-sex sex) and coursework in American history, stately stated in the classic manner.

Along the way though, you begin to guess where he’s headed. This is, at heart, an angry play about injustice and the betrayal of American dreams, and its original sin. O’Hara has the fever of the big theme in his play.

And under the pressure of myriad crises, the Lord President climaxes with an angry, explosive tirade about America, that we are all zombies, in the basement or not. In this context, it is not catharsis, but a display of particularly wind-scattered firecrackers.