Imagine our world after a nuclear disaster, a world without electricity, without television, without access to the invented stories and shows we have accustomed ourselves to believing are important. That is the harsh landscape playwright Anne Washburn wants you to imagine in her clever “Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play” at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

In “Mr. Burns,” Washburn pictures a group of individuals in the woods sitting around a fire on ratty furniture. One of them, Sam (James Sugg) acts as lookout, holding a shotgun. Three others freely trade memories about the past. The one thing they remember most clearly is the television show “The Simpsons,” particularly the 1993 parody of two versions of the movie “Cape Fear.”