Review: Tribute or rip-off? 'Original Sound' looks at the line

At least that agreement was reached quickly and amicably, unlike the time a lawsuit forced Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams to pay millions of dollars to the Marvin Gaye estate. Inspiration doesn’t come cheap.

Things land somewhere in between in Adam Seidel’s flawed but promising “Original Sound,” the rare new play that pays attention to how the modern pop-culture sausage is made. Nowadays, that means looking at the thin line between homage and appropriation, collaboration and exploitation.

Seidel (“Catch the Butcher”) and the director Elena Araoz draw the camps in quick, broad strokes. Ryan Reed (Jane Bruce) is a young folkie singer-songwriter “near the top level.” Pressured by her label to deliver a catchy pop single for her new album, Ryan, who has writer’s block, plagiarizes a song uploaded by Danny Solis (Sebastian Chacon), an upstart DJ and producer cutting tracks on his laptop. She figures it doesn’t matter: “It’s not like I ripped off Dr. Dre,” she says. “This is just some nobody.”

Except that the nobody notices: As soon as he hears Ryan’s song, Danny realizes her “Stay” once was his “Sway.”

His best — and, inexplicably, only — friend, Kari (Lio Mehiel), volunteers to be his manager and extracts a deal where Danny and Ryan will collaborate during a handful of songwriting sessions. (These, incidentally, are where a good chunk of the current real-life chart fodder is hatched.)

In exchange, Ryan’s own manager, the deliciously gruff Jake (Anthony Arkin, with the seen-it-all look of someone who’s spent too much time backstage), gets Danny to sign a financially disadvantageous contract and a nondisclosure agreement.

The emotional crux of the play takes place during the sessions, when the two youngsters win each other’s trust by jamming. Justin Townsend’s sleekly attractive scenic design is flexible enough to represent both Danny’s apartment and a recording studio.

It helps that both Chacon and Bruce are good musicians who pull off their characters’ noodling on a piano and guitar, respectively. Bruce even co-wrote “Sway” with Seidel and the music director Daniel Ocanto. From what we can hear in the show, the song is the rare piece of fictional art that is as good as everybody says it is, so much so that the “Original Sound” producers might consider making a video for it.

The show is on wobblier footing when it comes to the underdeveloped supporting characters, with Danny’s sister (Cynthia Bastidas) and estranged father (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) used merely as plot-delivery devices. Heredia, an original “Rent” cast member, is particularly, and egregiously, shortchanged.

It’s easy to see why Seidel concentrated on the two leads, as they embody the issues he cares about. Plot twists toward the end of the play alter our perspective on the characters’ ever-evolving relationship and make us ponder who’s using who.

“What does being original even mean?” a frustrated Ryan asks Danny. The music industry does not care what the answer is, as long as it can put a price on it.

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“Original Sound”

Through June at Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, cherrylanetheatre.org.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.