Jacqueline Chenault as Chrysothemis, Niamh O’Connor as Electra and Patrick Joy as Orestes ( Jordan Friend)

Do ancient tales still have something to teach us? The 4615 Theatre Company’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra answers with a resounding “Yes!”

The inaugural production in the company’s new home at the Highwood Theater in Silver Spring brings to life Brit playwright Nick Payne’s 2011 update of the Greek tragedy. The production’s emotional depth seems to expand the physical constraints of an intimate theater space.

Electra is a portrait of grief masquerading as a revenge story. The protagonist, played by a standout Niamh O’Connor, is still reeling from the death of her father King Agamemnon ten years ago. She struggles openly and at length with persistent mourning, but living in such close quarters with the people responsible for his murder has fueled thoughts of vengeance.

She fantasizes about her long lost brother returning to exact bloody justice upon her mother Clytemnestra (Lolita Horne) and her new beau Aegisthus. Little does she know, her brother Orestes (Patrick Joy) has come back, all grown up, with just such a plan.

But Orestes is not the bloodthirsty warrior she envisions. With his former tutor Strophius (Charlie Cook), he plans to invade Clytemnestra’s home and kill her, and Orestes is as hungry for the strength to carry out this act as Electra is to see it done.

Payne frames the familiar tragedy by starting simply, then slowly peeling back layers of loyalty, obligation, and family dysfunction. From the outset, Electra’s beef with her mother and stepfather feels straightforward. This reading of her lament furthers the long Hamletization of the Greek play, turning Electra into a font of murderous navel gazing. But as the show progresses and we hear opposing viewpoints from Electra’s less obstinate sister Chrysothemis (Jacqueline Chenault) and Clytemnestra herself, it’s clear that Agamemnon’s murder wasn’t a clear cut betrayal.

In an endless procession of an eye for an eye, the play asks where the line must be drawn when bloodshed only begets more of the same. The tale also moves forward from the eloquently stated poetry of imagining the rapture of killing to facing its corporeal reality, having to sit with the aftermath of such drastic measures.

Director Stevie Zimmerman’s staging makes the best use of a small space, creating a harrowing kind of intimacy suggesting that we’re not simply in the characters’s presence, but pressed inside their sprawling thoughts. The play is a heavy one, but the casting of Joy and Cook as the two male characters lends it a bookish levity, Joy in particular resembling a Wes Anderson caricature of the tragic hero. Though she has less exciting material to chew on, Horne is the standout performer, giving Clytemnestra a presence and heft that towers over the production, not to mention a welcome sense of vulnerability.

With a tight, intermission-less run time, Electra is a brisk and efficient play running through a marathon of heavy emotions at a deliberate clip. The Highwood Theater provides a unique space to see it performed, and this theater company maximizes it with ease. It’ll be exciting to see what else they do with their new home.

Electra runs through November 4th at the Highwood Theater @ 914 Silver Spring Ave. Silver Spring, MD. $16. Buy tickets here.