There was palpable anticipation at the Public Theater as audiences stirred in their seats, awaiting the newest work by provocateur and downtown darling Young Jean Lee. The much lauded Lee has challenged conventions with her intrepid brand of theater since 2003, most recently with Untitled Feminist Show, a “nearly-wordless celebration of a fluid and limitless sense of identity”. With her latest project, Straight White Men, Lee seems to suggest that the most daring experiment the avant-garde troupe can conduct is a good old-fashioned conventional play.

Risqué hip-hop booms as you walk into the theater. A highlight is Lady’s “Yankin”, a song that applauds “pussy power” and whose crudity belies the play you are about to see. From there, we take a far more domesticated turn as three brothers (Matt, Drew, and Jake) reunite for Christmas at home of their widowed father (Ed). Jake (Gary Wilmes) is a video game drone, playing with fierce focus as Drew (Pete Simpson) aka “Shit Baby” does what every baby of the family does best - beg for your older sibling’s attention. Every scatological joke, faux bro fight, and cruel anecdotal mishap transpires between these two brothers.

All this male posturing and bro-raderie make for an amusing display, but not much else. One must marvel, at the deceptively simple scheme Lee sets up. As we meet the brothers, one can’t help but try and out-guess the playwright. Where will she go with such ordinary set ups? Drew is a writer and professor on tenure track who channels his white guilt through therapy and “servicing his students”. Jake, the middle child, is a divorced banker and the most pragmatic of brothers, prone to bloated pontification that often ends in missteps. Finally, there is Matt (James Stanley), Lee’s pièce de résistance character, the child who was supposed to save the world, but stayed home instead. Burdened by student loans and an inscrutable ennui, Matt is a highly educated underachiever who instigates much of the play’s action (onstage evisceration) and hints at a darker undercurrent.

Operative word is 'hint'; we never learn what oppresses Matt. I respect Lee’s restraint, but wish she would give us more to connect to. The actors do fine work as the brothers and Austin Pendleton (Ed) is as adorable and innovative as ever. Theater’s most renegade voice pens the unremarkable narrative, but she does it with her distinctive brazen bent. Young Jean Lee fills us with questions. Perhaps, the most maddening thing she can do is not answer them -- and the most interesting.

Straight White Men is written and directed by Young Jean Lee; associate director, Emilyn Kowaleski; sets by David Evans Morris; lighting by Christopher Kuhl; costumes by Enver Chakartash; original music and remixes by Chris Giarmo; sound by Jamie McElhinney; dramaturgy by Mike Farry; movement by Faye Driscoll; production stage manager, Stephanie Byrnes Harrell; associate producer, Matthew Kagen; associate artistic director, Mandy Hackett; associate producer, Maria Goyanes; production executive, Ruth E. Sternberg. Starring Austin Pendleton (Ed), Pete Simpson (Drew), James Stanley (Matt) and Gary Wilmes (Jake). At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, through December 7. For more information and tickets visit https://www.publictheater.org