FEAST OF BURDEN Thureen, left, and Bos share a tense meal.

Photograph: Trevor Oswalt

Stage illusion through lightning-fast costume changes has served crowd-pleasers such as Greater Tuna and The Mystery of Irma Vep. Now Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen of the Debate Society try their hand at this most theatrical of tricks to more experimental effect. In The Eaten Heart, the comic duo populates three motel rooms with a collection of transient losers and oddballs, taking inspiration from The Decameron.

Thankfully, far fewer than Boccaccio’s 100 tales are told over the course of this performance, but enough mysterious characters exit through one door and enter from another to keep you guessing who’s who. The cast includes a pothead girl who works at a Renaissance fair, a mute handyman, a sad-sack magician and a radio preacher’s wife who flirts with an affable pizza delivery boy. The script, opaque and elliptical, offers scant clues as to identity and relationships; themes of loneliness and betrayal gradually emerge, but not very forcefully.

Bos and Thureen’s coy, fragmentary approach can be drolly evocative, but after an hour it does grow a bit frustrating. More motivational or narrative cookies would do wonders to increase interest. Even so, the design elements are excellent: Amanda Rebhein’s retro-’70s set, Mike Riggs’s lighting and Nathan Leigh’s sound design provide a series of ingenious tableaux. Oliver Butler marshals these elements and his performers for maximum low-budget atmospherics. The cast and crew may call themselves the Debate Society, but their talent and inventiveness is never really in question. — David Cote