The other day, a friend and I traded e-mail about what might happen in the second Bush administration. Wouldn’t it be funny (we mused) if, to keep the nation interested, the Bushies adopted the tricks that sitcoms use, late in their runs, to prop up ratings? The obvious start would be introducing a new baby, the time-honored tactic of “Growing Pains” and “Family Ties.”

Later that day, the Associated Press sent out a story, dateline Washington: “New Puppy to Pad Around White House.”

What do we make of this unstartling development? First, we can expect a wacky neighbor to bed down in the West Wing any day now – call your agent, Mr. Gorbachev. Second, it’s another twinkling sign that reality itself can become surreal, escaping satire’s ability to keep pace. It’s no coincidence that the best satire now being made, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” uses each day’s headlines as raw material – and sometimes as punch lines. How can you beat them?

For allegory, the pickings are even slimmer. That hard truth is being discovered just now by Sam Shepard and the audiences of his errant new play, “The God of Hell.” Frank (Randy Quaid), a big palooka of a farmer, lets a long-lost friend stay at his peaceable Wisconsin dairy farm for a few days. But Haynes (Frank Wood) is one weird dude, with his weird tics and weird habit of delivering electric shocks on contact. Frank’s wife Emma (J. Smith-Cameron) learns this the hard way: Zap!

Faster than you can say paranoid off-the-grid fantasy, a smooth-talking government agent named Welch (Tim Roth) slinks onstage. We know he works for the American government because he wears an American flag pin, and tries to ply Emma with an American flag cookie. Also he starts stapling plastic American flag streamers up all over the house.

Haynes, we gather, has escaped from some kind of secret government program in Colorado. (There are dark murmurs about plutonium, which derives its name from Pluto, “the god of hell.”) The name of the facility gives the show its word-of-the-day: Every time someone says “Rocky Buttes,” Haynes freaks out, and sometimes not him alone.

Up to this point, Mr. Shepard’s play is a kind of parable of contamination. The government has misbehaved, Colorado is on fire, and the damage is beginning to seep out into the countryside. The play echoes a string of apocalyptic shows in recent years, including one by Denis Johnson and Caryl Churchill’s

(vastly superior) “Far Away.” Mr. Shepard is appearing in a play of Ms. Churchill’s these days; maybe the influence is rubbing off? Aside from a fleeting mention of how “agribusiness” is killing off dairy farmers’ way of life, the play contains little that marks it as Sam Shepard’s. He seems particularly lost when trying to veer, outward and upward, into the realm of allegory.

In his gray suit and red tie, Welch is a stand-in for the Republican-controlled government. It’s hard to imagine, say, Nancy Pelosi delivering this speech to Haynes: “We can do whatever we want, buddy-boy. … Haven’t you noticed? There’s no more of that nonsense of checks and balances. … We’re in absolute command now. We don’t have to answer to a soul.”

This isn’t playwriting, it’s cartooning, and Mr. Roth’s performance doesn’t help. As Welch, it’s hard to tell what in the god of hell he’s doing. Teeth bared in a sinister grin, he stalks around the room, trying really hard to disguise his British accent. Here and there he strikes the right tone of quiet malevolence, as when he mentions to Haynes that the raggedy runaway “might be a serious candidate for punitive action.” It’s always fun to watch Mr. Roth do this onscreen. But onstage, he’s mostly mugging, neither funny nor chilling, and I have no idea why. Does his director, Lou Jacob?

Lumbering amiably about the farm, Mr. Quaid has “prey” stamped all over him. When he says it’s cold enough outside “to stick your tongue to the mailbox,” he speaks like a man who knows his business. Welch treats Frank and his wife, at first, like the naive Americans who harbor terrorists without knowing it. Then the allegory shifts. Offstage, Welch persuades Frank to hand over his cherished heifers, for the good of the nation. Later Frank learns the heifers will be sent to the cursed Rocky Buttes. “I thought you told me they were going to be air-dropped into exotic foreign lands,” he screams at Welch. “You told me my heifers were going to be glorified. Heroic!”

Get it? Frank and Emma are now like the parents of American soldiers, presumably those in Iraq. Just when you think the headline-grubbing is over, Welch begins to reprogram poor Haynes. He appears from the basement with an electric cable down his pants, and, more shocking still, a square black bag over his head. When Welch pushes a button and delivers a gajillion volts to Haynes’s penis, the visual analogy to Abu Ghraib becomes unbearable.

If it hadn’t already, the play here collapses. Mr. Shepard is a great playwright, but he’s unequal to the task of using allegory to illuminate our grisly reality, or using satire to amuse us with its strangeness. This says more about the news today than about Mr. Shepard’s treatment of it, to be sure. Creating an allegory that would help us understand our bizarre, terrifying world would tax even Orwell. Who could invent a story that’s funnier than the headlines? Joseph Heller, maybe – or Moliere.

The play’s most winning moments are modest, as when the expert Ms. Smith-Cameron questions the terrific Mr. Wood. He makes Haynes at once ridiculous and pitiable. He has a weirdly compelling voice, deep and resonant. When he gets excited, it heats to an eerie tenor. As Haynes’s plight gets worse and worse, Mr. Wood seems to grow dark rings under his eyes. By the end, they’re the size of rocky buttes.

Until November 28 (151 Bank Street, at Washington Street, 212-741-0391).