ongoing -Tues.-Sun, through Sun. Dec. 12

 "When crime is the family business, you always bring your work home." So reads the advert for the Boston area-centered "Vengeance is the Lord's," a play by Bob Guadini and directed by Peter DuBois which is having its world debut at BU's Huntington Theatre and running through Sunday Dec. 12. So, although said family's crime (or crimes) aren't revealed until the play is well into the drama, I guess if the ad copy has this reveal in it, so can we. But the Horvath family is not operating a Sopranos level, which is to say they are not at the highest level of criminality (although Tony and company weren't exactly Capone and Gambino). Though they have diversified - gambling, loan-sharking, chop-shopping - the Horvaths apparently haven't made a financial killing. The inventive rotating set - with the various family rooms and immediate outside space - suggests the Horvaths are perhaps lower middle class folks. There's struggle within the family - hints of "All My Sons" - with the ailing mother (Roberta Wallach) Margaret is divorced from father (Larry Pine) Mathew. Lee Tergeson - you might remember him as one of the inmates in the HBO series "Oz" - plays Woodrow, the son and the right-hand man in the business. Karl Baker Olson is Donald, the younger son and the one apparently ignorant of how the family operates. It would seem he's certainly the gentlest of the clan - the white sheep, so to speak. Katie Kreisler is daughter Roanne, a neurotic who keeps trying to stop smoking and keeps failing. There's a missing member of the family, too, and that would be Cheryl, a daughter who's been murdered. A man has been convicted, he's serving time, and now he's up for a parole board hearing. The mother's going to his hearing and contemplating mercy, seeing if the bastard will ask forgiveness. The father disagrees rather strongly. (We never learn the circumstances of the murder.)

There's a good deal of familial bickering, some of it humorous, some of it mean, but what cuts into their holiday - this starts at Thanksgiving (and goes through Christmas and ends at Easter) - is the news that a black kid has been shot by police, after Mathew fingered him. The police say he'd brought stolen car parts to the shop. When the police confront him - this is all history, not on the stage - the kid apparently was merely reaching in his pocket for a cell phone, but to cops that could mean a gun and they shoot to kill, so ... At the time we hear this, we're not quite sure if Mathew's shop has been swindled by the kid or if the kid might be in his employ. The kid's grieving, angry father, Parcel Manning (played by Johnny Lee Davenport), shows up, walking five miles in a snowstorm to confront Mathew at his home. The kid is innocent Mathew asserts. But why then did he call police?

The play's action is driven by the two murders, but it's very character-driven and what you see is the family pulling apart and (sporadically) coming together. There are more than a few dicey moral dilemmas posed. Pretty much everyone on stage relishes the f-bomb. The spirit of David Mamet reigns here. And certainly the spirit of "The Sopranos" - amoral, violent men with sense of humor - carries through here.

Ticket: $89-$29. Shows Tues.- Thurs at 7:30, Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8 and Sunday at 2. A lot of these have post-show discussions, too.

264 Huntington Ave., 617-266-0800 www.hungtingtontheatre.org