We mean this in the best possible way: All of the characters in Pig Iron's Hell Meets Henry Halfway are some of the saddest, most miserable and annoying people you'll ever meet. The play, based on a 1939 novel by Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, is devastatingly funny and delightfully morbid, and besides countless local accolades after its Live Arts debut, Hell scored an Obie in 2005. The titular Henry is a depressed secretary to an ailing prince. Henry's engaged to spoiled Maya, who begins a tempestuous relationship with her whiny, arrogant tennis coach. Dito van Reigersberg dons a black suit and a long face to embody Henry's mournful demeanor. Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey camouflages herself into the hunched, sickly prince. Quinn Bauriedel temper-tantrums his way through coaching the nasty Maya, played by Sarah Sanford, perfectly complementing Bauriedel point for point in vicious banter and sexual tension. And as the sickly prince's doctor, Geoff Sobelle himself looks like a walking disease, coughing and sputtering his part. The only one who escapes wretchedness is the simpleminded Ball Boy, played with wonderful levity by James Sugg (who, for the Eastern European tour, taught himself the lines in Polish and Lithuanian).

And just how did the actors achieve these palpable levels of misery? When they were workshopping the piece, writer Adriano Shaplin brought in the Freud essay "Mourning and Melancholia." "We did improv not around the characters, but around the state of melancholy," says Bauriedel. "So it was all about narcissism and hypochondria, all these pleasurable and awful things to watch on stage but it turned out to be boring, all this complaining and self-reflection. So we decided to turn up the volume on the melancholy." That's why, says Bauriedel, these characters break pencils, flop around on the floor, and throw off shoes to express their despair—which neatly meshes with the company's physically driven brand of theater. In other words, it's Pig Iron's signature on a very verbal play. "We said, let's destroy the set and destroy each other in this inescapable competition to prove that I care less than you do."

Hell Meets Henry Halfway, Tue., April 11, 8 p.m., Wed., April 12, 7 p.m., $20-$25, through April 16, Mandell Theater, Drexel University, 33rd and Chestnut sts., 215-627-1883, www.pigiron.org.