By Carolyn Hayes Harmer

With a title as uplifting as “Buried Child,” the viewer might presume (correctly) that bleak times are ahead. But the mechanism of bleakness in this play, which merited the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for playwright Sam Shepard, reaches beyond run-of-the-mill family troubles. In the season-opening production at The Abreact, director Greg Bailey manifests a household of isolation, scratching an incessant itch of mystery that will leave viewers gasping for salve in resolution.

The play and its characters are comparably confined to the front rooms of an old-fashioned farmhouse. Ailing patriarch Dodge (Alan Madlane) is immobile on the sofa, resigned to worrying his handkerchief against a stream of upstairs prattle from his wife, Hallie (Barbie Amann Weisserman). Borne back ceaselessly into the past, Hallie’s soliloquy dwells on the pride and promise of their grown sons, which has long since soured: Affectless Tilden (Mike McGettigan) is now living under their roof under vigilant scrutiny after a less-than-prodigal return from New Mexico, and amputee Bradley (Patrick Loos) stops by regularly to vengefully minister to the resistant Dodge. A third son tragically died long ago, and naturally shines all the brighter as the favorite and hero.

Just as the dialogue dwells on the old, so does the atmosphere. Bailey’s set design is overrun with the imprints of where photos and people used to be, and Weisserman’s filthy costumes suggest the literal stink of perpetuity. The place feels pickled with alcohol and stale air; while the lighting (by John Jakary) and sound cues are reminiscent of a world outside, they can’t penetrate such interior gloom. Contrast this with the inexplicable bounty of vegetables that Tilden keeps reaping from the forbidden, long-barren back fields – they stand out as uncharacteristically organic in such a decaying home, a clear sign that something is amiss.

Into the grotesque but certain rhythms of the house comes Vince (Michael Lopetrone), who claims to be Tilden’s son and wants to drop in on his grandparents during a cross-country trip with a lovely young companion (Dani Cochrane). But the inhabitants don’t claim to recognize him; indeed, they insist that there is no such person, and maddening appeals for clarity only lead to further obfuscation. It’s with this twist that “Buried Child” not only cultivates that nagging sense of something wrong, that some key revelation is needed to make these pieces fall into place, but also continuously moves the goal posts of what knowledge or action is ultimately needed to right it.

These are tough, desolate characters to portray, and although the performances here sometimes run hot, there are more hits than misses. Highlights include Madlane’s nothing-to-lose bursts of truth telling through questionable lucidity, as well as Loos’s emotional preemptive strikes and devastating physical work. Incredibly, McGettigan makes anonymity into a personality, going beyond merely sad and slow to become a terrifically disquieting presence. And Cochrane, saddled with dynamism among stasis, lends fascinating evolution to her unsuspecting character as she is enveloped by the house’s influence.

Although Shepard primarily dwells in the land of inference, the overarching mystery isn’t beyond the viewer’s grasp. But Bailey and company hit the nail on the head by making their production about more than the facts of the case. For over two hours, viewers are encouraged to believe that maybe once we know everything, then we can make sense of it. The show’s success comes from building its real tension within a capricious, morphing grasp of reality – the palpable but arbitrary rules of the house’s figurative gravitational pull, the manifestation of concurrent solitude, the need for release in the form of comprehension. The result is a production that is brutally far from withholding, but knows just what to keep out of reach.