Look for four or so actors (usually two heterosexual couples, but occasionally all women); a collection of scenes - rather than a fully developed plot - that serve mostly as prompts for tunes humorous or wistful; and dialogue that trades on mere recognition of specific demographic touchpoints rather than insight or wit. Benign ground cover or noxious weed? For producers, the answer seems to be the former; for paying customers seeking theater that gives meaning to their brief corporeal experience, well, it's probably the latter.

But hey, this isn't a cultural critique, right? It's a theater review. So if your idea of funny is a 50-ish woman whining, "All these gadgets make me feel stupid!" or if your fantasy of widowhood romance involves enjoying Dover sole the way you once did, then by golly, you've probably got compatriots populating over-55 planned communities all throughout this great land. But if you're searching for a thoughtful answer to Lonner's titular question, "Now What?", you're going to have to look elsewhere.

The script is essentially a peek into the lives of uninteresting people doing uninteresting things: listing their medical specialists, trying to get their insurance to cover plastic surgery, joining AARP. There's no denying these annoying facts of later life, and in sharper, defter hands, they might even point to some relevance greater than boomer myopia. As periphery, these touchstones are handy points of reference, but Lonner moves them front and center to stand on their own, which they don't. An erratic through-line about a widow reentering the dating scene is based on cliches as tired as Rupert Holmes' "Escape (the Piña Colada Song)," and a song called "The Sandwich Generation," about the period when adults stop caring for children and begin caring for aging parents, is perhaps the least successful candidate for a group sing-along ever written (though a sing-along, complete with lyrics projected onscreen, it is).

It hardly matters that the cast is mediocre in presence and voice, that the three-piece backing band looks incongruously young, and, by extension, bored, or that there's not one catchy chorus among Lonner's dozen or so ditties.

The Kids Left. The Dog Died. Now What? follows a recognizable formula, and for a lot of audiences that's enough. But you can hardly hit a box office this season without also running into Samuel Beckett, who happens to cover the same issues and doesn't expect anyone to sing along. Planted side by side like that, the ground cover starts to look pretty sparse.

The Kids Left. The Dog Died. Now What?

Playing at: Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. Eighth St., Philadelphia. Through Nov. 22. Tickets: $45. Information: 215-923-0210 or www.SocietyHillPlayhouse.org.