Just in case you somehow fail to realize that the blue-collar family at the center of Blood from a Stone is falling apart, the set designed by Derek McLane periodically alerts you. Several times during the course of this new work by first time playwright Tommy Nohilly, rainwater crashes through the rotting panels of the kitchen’s ceiling. It’s one of the all too many obvious devices in this overlong, kitchen sink drama being presented by the New Group.

Ethan Hawke, in full grunge mode, plays the central character of Travis, a pill-popping ex-Marine who has dropped by his Connecticut family home en route to a new life out west. He doesn’t exactly encounter domestic bliss: his mother Margaret (Ann Dowd) and abusive father Bill (Gordon Clapp) are at each other’s throats, and brother Matt (Thomas Guiry) is clearly in serious financial and possibly criminal trouble.

Watching these troubled characters ferociously battle with each other for two-and-a-half hours might have been interesting if any of them had something interesting to say. But despite the endless profusion of profanities and insults hurled about, this dysfunctional family drama clearly influenced by Sam Shepard fails to provide the sort of rich characterizations or situations that would make us care.

Inexplicably wasted are the terrific Natasha Lyonne and Daphne Rubin-Vega, who show up for brief, inconsequential scenes as Travis’ relatively sane sister and his married but sex-starved ex-girlfriend respectively.

Under the vivid, detailed direction of Scott Elliott, the performers do manage to provide fully lived-in characterizations. Clapp, in a role far removed from his mousy detective on TV’s NYPD Blue, is formidable as the fiery paterfamilias; Dowd projects vulnerability and fierceness in equal amounts; Guiry well conveys the insidious charm of the huckster brother and Hawke centers the proceedings by essentially playing straight man as he passively reacts to the surrounding chaos.

Acorn Theater, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. www.telecharge.com.