A great deal of the action of “The Golden Dragon,” at Studio Theatre, goes on in the cramped, super-busy kitchen of a takeout Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in Central Europe. It appears to be the busiest place on Earth. Dishes are ordered with lightning speed and prepared noisily in hand-held woks. As soon as those dishes are ready, a bell rings and they are delivered to the restaurant’s hungry diners. Yet the impressive realism of “The Golden Dragon” is not achieved through conventional theatrical means. Instead, German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig strips away any suggestion of the real world and asks his audience to use its imagination, as five actors portray 15 characters. His actors speak their own stage directions. Women play men and vice versa. Older actors play young characters; young actors play older characters.

Among Schimmelpfennig’s characters are a kitchen worker who has a terrible toothache, a young woman who discovers she is pregnant and whose husband doesn’t want a baby, a convenience store clerk, two airline hostesses, a man whose wife has left him, and the wife who has left her husband. Their lives overlap and their individual stories intertwine, interspersed with the kitchen scenes.