Why Is This Thing Called Love? Is there a patron saint of befuddled theatergoers? Had I known of one, I would probably have been fervently praying at intervals throughout "The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters," a wayward, Gothic comedy-drama by Marlane Meyer that opened on Tuesday night on Playwrights Horizons" smaller stage. The title character is the fantasy creation of the play's female protagonist, Aubrey Lincoln (Laura Heisler). Why Aubrey should have a particular affection for sea monsters remains a point unelucidated in this strange gumbo of a play, but it's clear enough why Aubrey should imagine that St. Martyrbride, as she is called, would also be the go-to icon for spinsters and those who suffer childhood infirmity. Aubrey has a leg-length discrepancy and wears a back brace, and although she hoards wedding dresses, she has remained unmarried, her teenage crush on a bad boy, Calvin Little (Rob Campbell), having come to nothing when he married someone else. Yet, in the play's sucker punch of an opening scene, we learn that this marriage has ended abruptly and unhappily. Calvin sits dazed, while his trashy harpy of a mother, Helen (Candy Buckley, hilarious in three contrasting roles), barks commands at Calvin and his half-brother, Jack (Danny Wolohan), who has been enlisted to dispose of the corpse of Calvin's wife. "Marie ran off just like she said she would," Helen screeches, planning a quick cover-up. The end. Understand me? Now let's get drunk and forget this night happened. Thus unencumbered, Calvin, who, a scene or two (and several years) later, is being fired from his job at the jar factory, decides that maybe he should set his cap for Aubrey (although he keeps calling her Audrey), who has recently returned to their pokey hometown. She's a doctor running the health clinic, and there's also the convenient (if absurd) fact of Aubrey's having spent all those post-high-school years pining for him. Veering between loopy, Christopher Durang-style comedy and a kind of sincerely cockeyed love story, "The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters" tries boldly to mix tones and styles at whim. There are a few bald speeches about the state of capitalism in America, too. The results made me wish I'd taken a little Dramamine before attending. The production, directed by Lisa Peterson, also features whimsical interludes in which St. Martyrbride herself swims across the stage, followed by a puppet of a whale spouting streams of shiny foil. The scene changes on Rachel Hauck's lovingly made set (which almost upstages the play) are effected by actors and stagehands wearing animal masks, for reasons that eluded me. But "Patron Saint," Ms. Meyer's first Off Broadway production in more than a decade, is most preposterous when it most needs to be convincing, in delineating the development of the love between Aubrey and Calvin. Ms. Heisler tries to act awkward and goofy (and is given a pair of eyeglasses, in an attempt to hide her natural prettiness), but it's hard to imagine that a high-achieving woman who escaped a poisonous upbringing in a backwoods town (her mother, also played by Ms. Buckley, was cruel and eventually went mad) would remain fixated on an alcoholic ne'er-do-well, bum leg or no bum leg. Most peculiar, while a subplot finds Aubrey investigating whether Calvin's half-brother has killed his wife, who has also mysteriously disappeared, she seems rather blithe about the mystery of her fiancé"s own disappeared bride. Also rather blithe about Calvin's cheating on her with the local tramp. The actors romping through the strange thickets of this overwritten, underconceived play seem to be having a good time, at least. Ms. Buckley screeches and snarls as the vicious Helen; acts imperious and demented as Aubrey's mad mom; and has a ludicrous gray pigtail as Mrs. Carlsen, the proprietor of the boardinghouse where Calvin lives. Jacqueline Wright doesn't have much to do as the saint flitting here and there, but she makes up for it with a bizarre turn as Mrs. Carlsen's nut job daughter. Mr. Wolohan glowers effectively. Mr. Campbell works as hard as anyone onstage to make his hazily drawn character believable, as Calvin slowly begins to develop a moral sense under Aubrey's perky tutelage. But his evolution from boozing, randy wife killer to something resembling a sensitive 21st-century man, as he appears to us in the final scene, is hardly credible. The trash-talking opportunist of the play's first scenes is found ruminating thoughtfully on the travails of marriage: "The heart endures, but you become alien to yourself and strange to others. You medicate. You make more and more mistakes talking, trying to explain that which you imagine needs no explanation. And before long that love you thought was your salvation becomes a trap door through which you fall and keep falling. This, from a man who several scenes before had been asking Aubrey to explain the meaning of the words "notice" and "timeline." Well, perhaps he's received a visitation from the patron saint of late-coming eloquence. The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters By Marlane Meyer; directed by Lisa Peterson; sets by Rachel Hauck; costumes by Paloma Young; lighting by Russell H. Champa; sound by Darron L West; production stage manager, Marisa Levy. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; Carol Fishman, general manager. At the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton; 212-279-4200, playwrightshorizons.org. WITH: Candy Buckley (Helen/Lynette/Mrs. Carlsen), Rob Campbell (Calvin Little), Laura Heisler (Aubrey Lincoln), Haynes Thigpen (Canadian Bill/Psychic Tom/Father Fabian), Danny Wolohan (Jack/Jesus/Speedy/Ray) and Jacqueline Wright (Penny/Molly/Betty/St. Martyrbride).