Last Friday, the Metric System hosted a showcase for their troupe of mostly Bard-educated artists and performers. The crowd was about 90 percent Bard grads too, which fairly cemented the impression that nearly all of that school’s graduates live somewhere between First Avenue and Montrose.

Insular though the Metric crew may be, their work is absorbing. Sam Bornstein presented some great examples of his organic kiddie-fractals (he calls them Monster Diamonds), and there were haunting new pieces by photographers Mike Marcelle and Mollie Mckinely. The favorite seemed to be a giant print by Reka Reisinger of herself superimposed (or not?) against a mountain in Yosemite, coaxing a sublime weirdness out of what might have been a Windows desktop theme.

The evening’s centerpiece was Andrew Gilchrist’s new play “James III,” which narrated the horrors of a sleepover at an incestuous, après-bellum southern home. As in his earlier works, “Ronald Pelican” and “Train Party,” the grand effect was the exaggeration of historical dialect to the point of hilarity, and then further to a kind of feverish despair. It was funny as hell, but the space was just too big, and too crowded, for the heartbreak to take hold. It was substituted instead for the more generic sadness of watching a bunch of arties drink and talk over what was, ostensibly, the source of their pretense in the first place –- decent art.

But that’s just the bitterness of a fan. The Metric System roster is solid and impressive; hopefully they will put on a more extensive (and quieter) show sometime soon.