A welcome new addition to Manhattan's growing small playhouse community is the Big, Little Theatre located on the Lower East Side, where the Michael Chekhov Theatre Company recently debuted with the production of the Pulitzer Prize winning play the Buried Child by Sam Shepard

For those unfamiliar with this important work, it's a piercing, darkly comic portrait of a family, morally, emotionally, and physically bankrupt. Set in America's heartland, a scene of madness greets Vince and his girlfriend as they arrive at the squalid farmhouse of Vince's hard-drinking grandparents, who seem to have no idea who he is. Nor does his father, Tilden, a hulking former All-American footballer, or his uncle, who has lost one of his legs, to a chain saw. Violence is never far from the surface in this claustrophobic domestic world, where only the memory of an unwanted child, buried in an undisclosed location, brings this family to a catastrophic conclusion.

It's a very dark vision, but Shepard then clothes this bleak portrait in a unique combination of genuinely funny comedic dialogue, puzzling and unresolved contradictions, and an atmosphere charged with foreboding, menace and the threat of violence. Drawing out these seemingly contradictory tones and keeping them in just the right balance to knit the whole together on stage requires finely tuned acting and direction Fortunately, there's a durth on both in this revival production by Michael Horn and directed by Tom Herman.

The two leads do a wonderfully entertaining job working together. Thomas Francis Murphy as the colorfully, cantankerously grandfather Dodge and Tom Pavey as the dangerously almost retarded like Tilden very rarely had an uninteresting or unbelievable moment between the two.

Although the small 35-seat space is true to its namesake, the performances given by the cast are big and one soon forgets that you're sitting in a former Lower East Side dress shop on Ridge and Stanton. The Sam Shepard Festival runs through mid-April with two other plays by the renowned playwright, Simpatico and A Lie of the Mind. The Michael Chekhov Theatre Company opens its new space with these stunning and provocative productions, and they should not be missed.