I quite enjoyed Adam Rapp’s “Hallway Trilogy,” which opened in installments this week (my review is in today’s paper). The action in the three plays is set in the same hallway at 50-year intervals. Of course, some of the situations are a little contrived — nobody spends that much time hanging out in a hallway — but most of the time Rapp set things up in a way that I found believable. The middle play, “Paraffin,” takes place on the first night of the 2003 blackout, for instance, so it’s not far-fetched that neighbors would hang out together on their shared floor. And technically speaking the hallway is gone, replaced by a room, in the third play, “Nursing,” which is set in 2053.

Some of my colleagues were turned off by some of the more graphic moments, but I thought the three plays are evidence that Rapp continues to evolve as a writer while retaining his specific touch — he just can’t be reduced to a mere shock auteur. Besides, said scenes didn’t feel gratuitous. The soiled-pants episode in “Paraffin” indicates the evolution of the building’s neighborhood — hipster junkie musicians aren’t necessarily the most well-kept people, and they are exactly who lived on the Lower East Side for a long time. The bodily fluids in “Nursing” are also justified because illness ain’t pretty. (In any case, this is nothing compared to what routinely happens in Rodrigo Garcia’s shows. Who’s ever going to bring him over here?)

Speaking of “Nursing”: I was particularly looking forward to that installment because I love science fiction, and it’s not a genre you see a lot at the theater. Rapp had a great starting point, which was the exact opposite of a post-apocalyptic premise: Instead of humanity being wiped out by a freak pandemic, it was diseases themselves that had been eradicated. Too bad the show ran in circles.