In 1994, a young man named Stephen Daldry put himself on the New York map by directing an old J.B. Priestley chestnut, “An Inspector Calls,” within an inch of its life. As the London import plodded its way through revelations of a well-bred family’s ghastly behavior, Mr. Daldry and designer Ian MacNeil piled on every stage effect they could think of, from mute bystanders to invasive sound effects to an elaborate bit of stagecraft in which the family’s elevated parlor tilted forward, sending its furniture crashing to the floor. All the bells and whistles did little for the play and a great deal for Messrs. Daldry (who won a Tony Award) and MacNeil (who was nominated).

Well, every generation apparently gets its own “An Inspector Calls.” The furniture stays largely upright in “Festen,” although the dinner plates do get smashed one by one. But another young British director (Rufus Norris) and another designer – oops, make that the same designer – have taken another dysfunctional rich-family potboiler and tarted it up with another barrage of eye-catching wizardry, winning all sorts of London awards in the process before coming to America.

Along with adapter David Eldridge, Mr. Norris has followed with extreme fidelity Thomas Vintenberg’s 1998 film, the first and perhaps most brutally effective film to emerge from the Dogme movement (an ostentatiously low-tech set of directorial strictures). But Mr. Norris fails to provide a viable equivalent to the film’s claustrophobic sense of dread or its distinctly European notion of endangered propriety. As a result, the two-dimensional version filmed several years ago in Denmark feels far more alive than the one with live human beings onstage.

“Festen” chronicles a really, really bad family get-together – the title translates to “Celebration” – held in honor of Helge Hansen (Larry Bryggman) on his 60th birthday. Three of his four children have put considerable physical and emotional distance between themselves and their parents; the fourth, a daughter named Linda, has recently killed herself as the play begins.

Linda’s twin brother, Christian (Michael Hayden), is by all appearances the model child of the family, the calm, empathic peacemaker. He has clearly spent his share of time cleaning up after the other two siblings – the uncouth, abusive Michael (Jeremy Sisto) and the underachieving Helene (Julianna Margulies). But Christian’s outward placidity masks an incendiary agenda. He has planned to make this a celebration to end all celebrations, perhaps literally, and delivers a dinnertime speech that reveals some shocking secrets about both Helge and his elegant wife, Else (Ali MacGraw).

The guests (which include a handful of family friends) respond to Christian’s claims in curious ways. Not only do they deny the accusations he has made, but for a time they seem to deny that he has made them at all. This closing of ranks is chilling, and the rest of “Festen” is given over to breaking down these defenses.

In many ways, Mr. Norris’s direction runs counter to the ethos of Dogme, a “vow of chastity” that was designed to help directors break free of the trappings of big-budget filmmaking. The chaotic, handheld-camera style has given way to a stately, portentous staging. And despite the relatively bare stage (generally confined to the fateful dinner table and a bed), the production is rife with moody sound and lighting effects by Paul Arditti and Jean Kalman.

Mr. Norris, of course, is under no obligation to adhere to any set of rules, let alone ones established for an entirely different medium. But the film derives much of its power from the fly-on-the-wall immediacy that Mr. Vintenberg created through this pared-down approach. The story, for all its mounting intrafamilial tensions, isn’t terribly different from dozens of other family melodramas; Mr. Norris has replaced what made the film special with what makes Mr. Norris seem special.

An early series of cross-cutting among the three siblings is muddled and off-puttingly flashy, and Mr. Norris succumbs to similar impulses during the hallucinatory Act II sequence in which the party gets really out of hand. Even worse, he overreaches again and again in using Michael’s young daughter as a paragon of innocence. And the messianic overtones of the suffering-for-others’-sins protagonist would be fairly obvious even if the play didn’t open with Michael greeting his somber brother, “Jesus, Christian! … Jesus Christ!”

Some of Mr. Norris’s notions pay off: He uses the film’s various drinking songs – some nonsensical, some melancholy, some bigoted – to intriguing effect, and the intensity that builds and dissipates with each of Christian’s accusations is extremely well-calibrated. In fact, Mr. Hayden’s coiled anger, coupled with Mr. Bryggman’s well-heeled malevolence, provides most of the production’s highlights. The two play marvelously off each other, most notably in a pair of vicious counterattacks by Helge. No matter how distant father and son have grown, their wary familiarity and keen awareness of the other’s weaknesses make for a gripping interplay that is missing elsewhere in “Festen.”

Ms. Margulies pushes too hard at the beginning but eventually eases into her confused, divided character. Mr. Sisto and Carrie Preston (as Michael’s slatternly wife), by comparison, start off in a sweaty, arms-flailing froth and build from there. David Patrick Kelly and Keith Davis stand out as two fellow party guests.

And then there is Ms. MacGraw, whose early-1970s heyday of “Love Story” and “The Getaway” has earned her a sort of campy footnote as a less-than-capable leading lady. Things start off on an unpromising note, as Ms. MacGraw acts Else’s first few scenes primarily with her right index finger. But then something odd happens: As the family begins to fall apart, the woman playing its matriarch regains a perverse sort of composure. Her precise, borderline uncomfortable enunciations begin to look more and more like the coping mechanisms of a woman who’s been asked to withstand too much for too long. The performance is not for all tastes, and it might not even be right for this play, but Ms. MacGraw’s efforts actually outshine those of some of her more “respectable” co-stars.

Open run (239 W. 45th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).