BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

In her highly ambitious latest play, “stop. reset.,” which premiered on Sunday at the Signature Theater Center, Regina Taylor certainly reveals plenty of imagination – rather too imagination, actually, for one play.

Taylor’s story initially concerns a distinguished book publishing house that is being decimated by the rapid technological advances of the new media. The venerable head of the firm (Carl Lumbly) listens to his department heads (Michi Baral, Teagle F. Bougere, Latanya Richardson Jackson and Donald Sage Mackay) plead for their jobs even as they undercut each other.

Ambling around the arguments erupting in the sleek metal-and-glass offices is J (Ismael Cruz Cordova), a young hip-hop-ish custodial worker who mops and dusts while obviously immersed in his headset world. The audience soon becomes aware that J is far more than he appears to be to the other characters.

He is a trickster time-traveler from the future who casually scavenges artifacts from ancient civilizations.

Eventually the old publisher latches on to J as some sort of savant who might bail out his company. Then the other employees discover that J is not of their world and all sorts of sci-fi hell busts loose.

Taylor, who also directs, overloads her 95-minute play with too much information. Along with a surfeit of back story regarding the multi-cultural characters, Taylor offers digressions involving social history and the evolution of the publishing. Had the playwright kept the story in the here and now, the drama might be a sharp look at professionals struggling to stay abreast of rapid technological change.

The unexpected development of the story’s hazily-explained science fiction elements transmogrifies the play into something of a fantasy that is not resolved satisfactorily by the conclusion. Although Taylor’s bait-and-switch sort of dramaturgy ultimately proves to be too dense with character details and vague in outcome, it remains intriguing and often becomes surprisingly funny as the subsidiary characters turn on each other.

Taylor employs large projection screens within designer Neil Patel’s handsome setting to introduce extra dramatic notations – such as excerpts from Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” – and multi-media effects into the production.  Sound designer Robert Kaplowitz’s subtle aural score is intricate and effective. Taylor obtains excellent performances from the actors whose vitality anchors her play in a semblance of reality even when its story drifts into the ether of future existence

“stop.reset.” continues through Oct. 6 at the Pershing Square Signature Theater Center, 480 W. 42nd St., New York. Call (212) 244-7529 or visit www.signaturetheatre.org.