Drama of despair

“Mud’s” tragic message will stick with you.

Even though there are scenes in “Mud” that make you want to rush home for a holy water spritz, it is impossible to turn away from this dirge of a drama.

Now being staged by Thinking Cap Theatre at the Vanguard in Fort Lauderdale, the tragedy is by avant-gardist Maria Irene Fornes, who was born in Havana and immigrated with her family to New York City in 1945 at the age of 15. Fornes has written more than 40 plays (most produced off-off-Broadway) and won nine Obie Awards.

In “Mud,” set in a drab rural shack somewhere in Depression-era America, you get her experimental vibe, as well as feel — viscerally — her go-to theme of soul-hammering poverty and how it wears you down, grinds you up.

Mae (Gretchen Porro) is scraping by, taking in laundry. Downtrodden and dead-eyed, she shares the farm duties with Lloyd (Christian Vandepas), although he is desperately sick and unable to hold up his end. And like his undiagnosed illness, there is something else off about Lloyd; something unsaid and unexplained that renders him a man-child.

Mae is stuck, literally and figuratively, in the mud of her life. Their relationship undefined at first, she and Lloyd snipe at each other, both clearly miserable. She lords over him that she has begun to grasp rudimentary skills in reading and arithmetic. She plans to free herself.

“I’m going to die in a hospital with clean feet and white sheets,” she tells Lloyd, trying to get him to go to the clinic.

When Mae needs help reading some medical jargon that is beyond her abilities, she asks neighbor Henry (Alex Alvarez) for help. Soon, she asks him to live on the farm and share her bed, but the love triangle threatens to sink her even further.

The production’s design — set, lighting, sound, costumes — is strong and evocative. Director Nicole Stodard has given the piece enough shape and definition to offset that where-is-this-heading question you might have in the first 15 minutes of the 80-minute performance (without an intermission). The cast is clearly up to interpreting and relating the tricky shifts from poetic surrealism to joyless realism and back again that are embedded in Fornes’ script. There is real power in Fornes’ writing, and this production brings it forward, like a dank dream you can’t quite shake.

Note that no one under the age of 18 will be admitted without an adult due to the mature content, including violence, sexuality and language.

COURTESY Alex Alvarez, Gretchen Porro and Christian Vandepas, right, in Thinking Cap Theatre’s production of “Mud.”