I sometimes wish I knew less about how plays are built. I’ve been going to the theater regularly since my early teens and putting up plays professionally for more than 50 years, so the techniques and conventions of naturalistic dramatic writing are imprinted as pathways as broad as six-lane highways in my brain. On the one hand, there is pleasure in being in on the game. (“Ooh, I saw how you did that!”) But occasionally it is fun not to know, to return to the time when I was a kid and every plot twist and revelation was a surprise. To not be able to spot a set-up instantly or to anticipate its likely payoff.

When a play’s characters, premise and execution are especially compelling, I forget about technique and surrender to the ride. The first time I saw Lanford Wilson’s Hot L Baltimore when it premiered off-off-Broadway above a shoe store on the upper west side, I was so swept away by the experience that I returned three days later to try to watch it with a more analytic eye. I relish experiences like that. Maybe once or twice a season I have the good fortune to be similarly swept away.

I’m not saying that plays that don’t sweep me away aren’t often terrific, rewarding experiences. But I am stuck with this habit of analyzing on the fly that rarely shuts down.

This habit mostly refused to shut down as I watched John Patrick Shanley’s new play, Brooklyn Laundry, which recently opened under his direction at Manhattan Theater Club’s off-Broadway space. If anything, he introduced his setups so obviously that I imagined Klieg lights flaring on in coordination.

I’ve liked an awful lot of Shanley’s work over the years, so I always go to see something he’s part of in a state of high anticipation. But Brooklyn Laundry feels so evidently constructed that during the performance I pictured file cards above his desk outlining the action and what topics had to be covered when. (I have no idea if he works this way or not.)

Cicely Strong plays Fran, a woman dissatisfied with where her life is. Adding to her dissatisfaction are the circumstances of two sisters, whose own difficulties are going to make Fran’s life even more challenging. The possibility of something better is embodied by Owen (played by David Zayas), a self-made success with a thriving business based on three neighborhood laundries. I don’t want to get too specific because I prefer not to tell too much of a play’s story, but when Owen tells a story about how the bad luck of being hit by a car became the basis of his fortune and she responds by saying she kinda wishes she could have that kind of bad luck, you know that a life-changing event or two on the order of being hit by a car will be part of her story.

So, I felt cranky watching the play deliver payoffs that I pretty much anticipated.

And then Shanley brought us to a final scene in which we knew we would learn whether Fran and Owen would overcome the many obstacles between them, and, despite my crankiness, I found I cared like crazy. (It helps that Strong and Zayas are wonderful together.) I consciously turned down the analytical commentary that had been running and watched the scene play out, hoping for a happy ending.

So, yes, I recommend the play, damn it.