The title of David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly” comes from a line in a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare also wrote a play in which a windy storyteller is ordered to get to the point: “More matter, with less art.” As audiences of Mr. Rabe’s sprawling tale might intuit, they are not the same play.

Mr. Rabe’s bleakly comic drama about depraved casting directors eking out a depraved Hollywood existence in the depraved modern world runs 3 hours and 10 minutes. On and on it tumbles, like a Congressional hearing, with narcotics. At an approximate ratio of one line of blow for every two lines of dialogue, you will see a substantial chunk of the Colombian economy consumed before the night is through.

It is 1980, the computer age, and everyone is crashing. In Scott Elliott’s revival for The New Group, our first glimpse of the dingy bungalow is Eddie (Ethan Hawke), asleep on the couch, ass half-exposed. “The Smurfs” are on TV. In storms his friend Phil (Bobby Cannavale), a hulk in black leather. An ingenious touch: Phil has a psychopath’s tough-guy bravado and all the insecurities of a preening actor.

Phil is just telling a funny story about how he hit his wife when the pair are joined by Eddie’s roommate Mickey (Josh Hamilton), a heartless, sarcastic bastard who appears to be sleeping with Eddie’s girlfriend, Darlene. (He is.) The tone of the play is set: Mr. Rabe’s dialogue is shouted or mumbled – angry, bewildered, and profane. Before long, the young gentlemen will begin to smoke, snort, and chug every chemical in sight; “Hurlyburly” is to substance abuse what Times Square is to signage. Eddie’s grisly wake-up routine gets a boost from costume designer Jeff Mahshie: In addition to resplendent bedhead and boxer shorts, Mr. Hawke gets his morning buzz in a tattered Harvard sweatshirt.

What are drugs and violence without the sex? Soon the boys are joined by Artie (Wallace Shawn), a friend of the room and screenwriter manque. He introduces teenage runaway Donna (Halley Wegryn Gross), whom he’s just found in a hotel elevator. She is, he explains, “a care package, you know. So you can’t say I never gave you nothing.” By this he means Eddie and Mickey can have sex with the vaguely catatonic sprite to stay in practice until they meet a real woman.

Mr. Rabe’s addled hustlers evoke “American Buffalo” and “Ocean’s 12,” sometimes on alternating breaths. Friendships are tenuous and superficial, and business arrangements worse. “These f—ing snakes are sharks out here!” says Eddie of movie people. He and his friends all have wives or ex-wives, and children, floating around, some closer than others. “Everybody I know is either recently married or recently divorced, some of them are the same people,” somebody says. “It’s a social epidemic.”

Like Nathanael West, Mr. Rabe depicts the sunshiny amorality of Los Angeles, but he also wants to attack American culture generally. Plenty of playwrights don’t know how to end a script. Mr. Rabe’s problem is more fundamental: He didn’t even realize when to start trying. The scale of “Hurlyburly” feels off by an order of magnitude. What begins as unsettling and provocative grows ponderous, repetitive, and, worst of all, unpersuasive.

It’s beyond the power of Mr. Elliott to rescue Mr. Rabe’s script, though he does a fair job with what he’s given. Over the past couple of seasons, he has drawn an increasingly fancy crop of actors to the New Group, like Kristen Johnston, Lili Taylor, and Annabella Sciorra. This particular marquee groans under the weight of one of the starriest ensembles of the year. But they miss almost as often as they hit. There’s a peculiar staggering effect at work. The scenes that seem particularly well written, like Eddie’s reconciliation with Darlene (Parker Posey), tend to fall flat as presented here. But scenes that are overwritten and lack punch, like Phil spilling his guts to Eddie, are acted superbly.

Jangling and hypersensitive, the excellent Mr. Hawke is the gooey center of Mr. Rabe’s play. He and Mr. Hamilton make a study in opposites. Mr. Hamilton’s Mickey, lanky and badly mustached, does every drug in sight, but flosses regularly and shines his shoes; Mr. Hawke’s Eddie is a compact, bleary-eyed mess. Mr. Hamilton is invulnerable; Mr. Hawke is a walking nerve. For range and power, this might be the fullest performance Mr. Hawke has given.

Mr. Cannavale manages to keep Phil interesting, even when making his 400th thinly veiled allusion to his crumbling psyche. Mr. Shawn, with his chirpy voice and easy air of debauchery, lifts every scene he’s in. (Another kudo for Mr. Mahshie: In his white track suit with red racing stripe, bright undershirt, and Warholian rug, Mr. Shawn looks like an unusually malevolent garden gnome.) Ms. Gross has the right air of spooky mystery as young Donna, but Ms. Posey doesn’t solve her character. Neither does Catherine Kellner, who plays the troubled stripper summoned by Eddie to cheer up his pal Phil; that particular romance, needless to say, does not end well. Mr. Elliott hasn’t managed to lend their scenes the same shape as the others.

Jason Lyons lights Derek McLane’s scenery with bold, compelling strokes. You have no trouble believing that this is a picture of corroded life in the hills above Hollywood a quarter century ago. Had Mr. Rabe written a more evocative, less verbose play, you’d find it easier to think it captures the pathologies of Hollywood, and America, today.

Until March 5 (410 W. 42nd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, 212-279-4200).