They say that if you give a person enough rope, he’ll hang himself. In the case of playwright John Kuntz, the cord would be Jump Rope, a perverse yet lightweight " killer love story " that’s not likely to knock anyone dead. Penned by the author/actor of Freaks!, Starfuckers, Actorz with a Z, and Sing Me to Sleep, the piece is performed by a trio of professional actors who are not John Kuntz. He, on his new play’s opening night, was still surprising the multitudes with his revelatory, against-type performance as Welsh militarist Fluellen in Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Henry V.

The tricky new work, about a long-time Boston gay couple simultaneously romancing a new man who may or may not be a serial killer, doesn’t exactly go nowhere, but it goes somewhere thinly and cutely, tripping over cliché oftener than the characters do their jump ropes. Only on occasion — say, when a lovably flip Poland Springs purveyor demonstrates his assertion that all the poems of Emily Dickinson can be sung to the theme of Gilligan’s Island — does the work rise to Kuntzian levels of whimsy. And it never achieves the edgy poignancy that marks the author’s best efforts, particularly Sing Me to Sleep (which also includes a serial killer). Still, Kuntz, who’s best known for collections of vignettes, is working toward sustaining a story line, and he does manage a surprise ending that’s capped by a pricelessly grotesque line noting the need for fastidiousness when committing mayhem. Moreover, his stated desire to create gay characters who are neither stereotypical nor nice is not a bad thing.

Matt August’s production begins stylishly, with Bill Mootos’s Machiavellian Alex and Benjamin Evett’s fussier Martin sharing a slip-covered couch in sterile environs while Brooks Ashmanskas’s Kurt, in black gym clothes, fiendishly jumps rope. Between bouts, Alex and Martin, more waspish than Oscar and Felix, engage in snippish exchanges that suggest all is not warm in their 13-year relationship. And that’s before the anniversary cake arrives with a serious cleaver sticking out of it. Meanwhile, the television dispenses reports of a killer in the neighborhood who’s strangling and stabbing gay white men in their 30s. Remember the jump rope? And don’t forget that cleaver.

As the play progresses, Kurt insinuates himself into the lives of Alex and Martin, at first appearing as " the water guy " who pops into the wrong apartment to deliver a vat of Poland Springs. Ominous hints are dropped, but the impish, self-effacing Kurt (doubtless the role Kuntz would play) seems a nice guy. All the characters address the audience, but Kurt’s confidences are the funny ones, numbered accounts of bad boyfriends and dating catastrophes. Alex gets stuck with the obligatory account of parental disowning upon coming out; Martin has an equally predictable tale of random violence that explains why he’s a birthday-hating orphan. Martin, it turns out, has rejected the gay grail of the gym, and that leads to the play’s furious spinning of possible strangulation tools, preferably to the coldly passionate, exercise-friendly accompaniment of Blondie.

Kuntz’s black comedy seems influenced by Pinter (particularly The Lover) and Orton, but it’s pretty tame stuff, amply dosed with the writer’s own pop-cultural oddities and no small amount of limp filler. The author does keep his balls in the air regarding the murder mystery, though there are elements of the set-up that don’t make sense, involving, as they do, play-acting when there’s no audience (except us). And too much of the first act seems like treading water; what little momentum there is comes after intermission. Which suggests that a 90-minute one-act, with fewer bad-boyfriend stories for Kurt and fewer bad-break-up scenes for Alex and Martin, might work better.

Kuntz is a proven product, and he’s come a long way from his late-night-with-SpeakEasy beginnings. Here the work, though too winking and belabored to rank among his best, is confidently served up, under Matt August’s direction, by Mootos, easy but unsettling as the not-so-nice Alex, and the American Repertory Theatre’s Evett, who imbues Martin with all sorts of buttoned-downed anxiety. Ashmanskas seems a bit too much of a teddy bear, and a little less of a studmuffin, than Kurt calls for, but he’s appealing nonetheless. As for Kuntz, he has talent to burn, but he tosses pieces off too quickly. It wouldn’t kill him to slow down.