Woody Allen has true talent — none of which is apparent in the unoriginal drama ‘Second Hand Memory.’

Woody Allen was once asked if he considers himself lucky, given how dark so much of his work is. “Within the drab limitations that we’re all saddled with,” Allen replied, “yes, I’m very lucky.”

Watching Woody Allen’s lackluster play, “A Second Hand Memory,” directed by the author at the Atlantic Theatre Company, one wonders if Allen really knows his limitations. For Allen, the pre-eminent filmmaker who seems to have lost touch with who he is several years ago, writing and directing serious drama turns out to be more of a stretch than he can handle. The result is a painful experience of watching a master misapply himself, making the worst of a stellar cast. A play about betrayal becomes itself a kind of double-cross of Allen’s loyal audience in New York. With “A Second Hand Memory,” Allen’s luck may have completely run out.

Allen grew up in Flatbush after the Second World War. “A Second Hand Memory” is set in Brooklyn in the 1950s, where a Jewish family is coming apart at the seams. The narrator, Bea, played by Kate Blumberg, is the black sheep of the family. She gives a spunky, wry perspective on their failings even as she confesses her own alcoholism and sexual promiscuity. In some ways, ironically, she is the liveliest presence on stage; it is the other characters who seem faded into a sepia-toned past. Allen himself may have, as a critic for the Manchester Guardian once wrote, a “soft and absent presence,” but when his characters seem absent, it is hard for an audience to be involved in them or their story.

Lou Wolfe is an angry, philandering husband, played by Dominic Chianese, a Broadway veteran who is now best known for his role as “Uncle Junior” on “The Sopranos.” His whole life is directed toward wanting his son, Eddie, played by film and television actor Nicky Katt, to take over the family jewelry business, which he has built up again after his employees looted it.

His wife, Fay, played by Beth Fowler, who was a memorable Mrs. Lovett a few years ago in a Circle in the Square production co-starring Len Cariou, is a beaten-down housewife who seems to have little genuine love for her husband. To rescue the family’s finances, she throws herself on the mercy of her brother, Phil Wellman, a successful Hollywood talent agent played by Michael McKean, who recently starred in “Hairspray” for five months. In one of the few good scenes in the play, Phil threatens to demand repayment of a large loan if Lou does not stop cheating on his wife.

Rather than take over the family business, Eddie heads out to Hollywood to reach for a more glamorous career. His Uncle Phil, who sits in front of a wall of photos of movie stars and seems to spend all day jumping from one phone call to another, is only mildly sympathetic to Eddie, who has to keep repeating himself in order to make Phil understand that he lacks any real skills in the movie business.

Eddie quickly embarks on a relationship with Phil’s vivacious redheaded secretary Diane, played by Erica Leerhsen, who has appeared in a couple of Allen’s films as well as a number of television shows, only to find that his uncle has his eye on her as well. Eddie marries a more conventional woman, Alma, played by Elizabeth Marvel, although he never gives her his heart, even after she becomes pregnant with his child.

Eventually, these characters all end up briefly back in Brooklyn, where they have to sort out their loyalties to one another — or, as it happens, decide that they owe each other less than they think they do.

“A Second Hand Memory” is an apt title for a play that seems at an odd remove from its characters. It also unfolds like a dull rehash of the heavily plot-driven, naturalistic plays of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s that we associate with playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. Even the words are derivative; when Lou attacks his wife for “filling Eddie’s head with pipe dreams,” the reference to O’Neill is obvious. And the focus on the father-son relationship, with the heavy undercurrent of moral responsibility that one generation owes to another, is clearly inspired by Miller. When Lou cries, “With Eddie here, I can lick the world,” he seems almost like Willy Loman in his desperation to pass something of value on to his son, on whose loyalty he bases his own fragile sense of masculinity.

But unlike, for example, Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Broadway Bound,” also both set in Brooklyn, the characters in “A Second Hand Memory” lack credibility and psychological complexity. The complex multi-level set, suggests that the characters will embark on journeys of self-discovery but the script barely hints at such undertakings. The more the characters talk about bottling up their emotions, the less they actually express or work through them.

To be sure, some of these characters are supposed to be shallow, especially the Hollywood denizens. Eddie may be shocked that his former girlfriend, who was raised by socialist parents, has become a materialistic, globe-trotting name-dropper who shows off that she knows Burt Lancaster, Loretta Young and Frank Sinatra and had the privilege of eating Chinese food cooked by Danny Kaye. But no one in the audience will be particularly surprised, given the play’s overly simplistic opposition between the conventional Jewish values of Brooklyn and the garish glitz of tinseltown. When Phil, quite improbably, does not recognize the word “seder,” one knows immediately he has gotten quite far from his Jewish roots.

The more that Allen tries to be profound, the less effective he is. To say, as Alma does, that money is the “universal solvent” does not present us with a new insight. If the play is supposed to be about memory, as its title suggests, then it is perhaps best summed up in the question, asked by Fay, “Is a memory something you have or something you’ve lost?” Unfortunately, “A Second Hand Memory” is so unmemorable that by the end of the play, we have entirely ceased to care.