Toxic dreams: Ken Marks photo: Carl Skutsch Of a White Christmas By Rinne Groff Ohio Theatre 66 Wooster Street 212.868.4444 more theater most popular most commented The Unconquered by Alexis Soloski Rafta, Rafta . . . by Alexis Soloski Rattlestick Playwrights Theater by Michael Feingold Unsettled Sightlines by Michelle Orange John Turturro's Does Beckett Hamm I Am by Alexis Soloski Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

Diane, fired from her accounting job, retreats into 18-hour sleep fests—curled atop the table in a slip—where she insists she's "working" to reclaim the toxic lake nearby. Husband Tom, a suit with the powers that pollute, huffs with exasperation. His grown daughter Sallie, a brat and a druggie, devises a devious plot against her somnolent stepmother. A young immigrant fleeing a Russian ecological disaster figures in her plan.

As Diane sleeps, amusing domestic comedy darkens into gory violence. Is the mysterious young man with the syringe really Diane's landscape architect? As she wakes, she sweeps him into her rhapsodic world, and he erupts into a rock ballad, wailing into the broom-handle and dancing on the linoleum. Derek Lucci plays the befuddled Russian with perfect pitch opposite Meg MacCary's surpassingly sweet Diane. Ken Marks and Susan Pourfar bring bite and poignancy to father and daughter.

Groff doesn't convincingly resolve her entrancing situation, but director Trip Cullman casts a spell in which the taut action, zany humor, and sensitive connections flow into each other as in . . . a dream.