In the opening minutes of Zarina Shea’s new play, “Let’s Call Her Patty,” we get a detailed sketch of the title character. Patty is a well-preserved Upper West Side resident of a certain age; she’s a “lady of moderate means,” we’re told, which is to say that “anywhere else she’d be super wealthy.” She donates to the ACLU but is miffed when her taxes are raised, and she gets excited when a longtime New York Times columnist, Gail Collins, is scheduled to speak nearby.

Ms. Shea’s protagonist is, in short, either a stereotype or a flat-out parody of a kind of proudly liberal but self-interested urbanite; the hokum-drenched script, which shutters between comedy and pathos without showing grace in either pursuit, makes it unclear whether the playwright is sending up Patty’s milieu or wallowing in it.