Madness works in off-Broadway play ‘A Particle of Dread’

It’s hard to know what’s going on during Sam Shepard’s new play — but A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations) always holds your interest. Having the great Irish star Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, TV’s The Honorable Woman) is a bonus, but the style is pure Shepard, a writer who’s laid bare the damaged soul of American families. As the subtitle indicates, Shepard went back to the original twisted clan, taking on the Greek myth about a man who mistakenly kills his own father and unwittingly marries his own mother. Except the story is now a noir thriller with touches of Grand Guignol gore and a sprinkling of surreal humor. The tone is obvious as soon as we discover Frank Conway’s set, a white-tiled slaughterhouse or torture chamber, with blood-soaked rags and intestines hanging from a clothes line in the corner. Under Nancy Meckler’s efficient direction, the action moves back and forth between ancient Greece and contemporary California, the site of a ghoulish triple murder by a highway.