A literal hothouse drama. It’s August in Oklahoma, and Mama’s a cold-blooded pill-popper who keeps the house at temperatures almost as elevated as the sense of foreboding Daddy establishes with the play’s opening line: “’Life is very long.’ – T.S. Eliot.” Oh is it now? Because, of course, that’s from “The Hollow Men,” the one that ends, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” For his part, Daddy drinks; it’s how he deals with “the plains” — his Middle America version of the Southern blues. Speaking of that storied region: Tracy Letts’ demolition derby of a play feels like an update of Tennessee Williams. The setup: take a few generations of family, stick ‘em in the same house under stressful circumstances, and watch the pressure cooker do its work. The update: dial back the religious and sexual repression, keep the secrets and over-the-top cruelty, and oh yes, add modern, weapons-grade painkillers and a whole bunch of profanity. (You will very likely laugh at the line, “Eat the fish, bitch!” in part because you are desperate for relief from the slow-mounting dread. There’s a lot of that sort of thing, because even — especially? — unhappy families can be funny to behold.) The upshot: see if anyone’s left standing by the end. Somewhere along the way, someone says that dissipation is far worse than cataclysm — well then, thank you, Mr. Eliot. Backyard Renaissance has pulled together a heavy-hitting cast and sent it spinning about Tony Cucuzzella’s surprisingly capacious set — though not nearly capacious enough to keep folks from colliding in all sorts of ways. The set size makes sense: it’s a big show in every way, including emotionally — the kind that aims to leave you so wrung out that the eventual applause, while deserved, feels somehow out of place. And in this, it succeeds.