A Place for Work and Introspection His name is Andy Bragen, and welcome to his office. He is a playwright, and good thing you're here, because there's a story he wants to tell about an artist's residency he got: nine months in a Lower Manhattan office to do with as he wished. There will be transparencies, and trooping from room to room, and a herd of roller chairs to sit in, unless you'd prefer to stand. Memories of his dead father will creep in, the focus shifting from a middle-aged artist's floundering to a son's confused mourning. In "This Is My Office," an intimate, semiautobiographical solo piece written by the real Mr. Bragen, the actor David Barlow plays a character named Andy Bragen. The Play Company production, directed by Davis McCallum, is billed as site specific. But the site is a puzzling choice: Chashama, a cavernous, semi-raw space in Midtown that works steadily against Mr. Barlow. So does the decision to have the spectators, only a few dozen allowed at each performance, wear headsets through much of the 85-minute show. As configured by the set designer Andrew Boyce, the space is sprawling and awkward, requiring Mr. Barlow to engage in crowd control even as he seeks to establish rapport. When the actor disappears around one corner or another, his miked voice remains audible through the earphones. But we hear his voice filtered through them even if he's standing right in front of us, making eye contact. The cumulative effect is distancing, not in an intriguing, Brechtian way, not in a way that makes sense for a play that wants to move us and make us laugh. When, deep into the performance, we are ushered into a small, low-ceilinged room and told to take our headsets off, the experience is alive at last: We're right there with Mr. Barlow and the tale he's trying to tell. But it's too late by then. All that time at the office, and still we aren't prepared to care.