Sam Shepard still writes, though less frequently than in his fecund youth. Then, three decades back, he was an essential new theatrical voice, the tumbleweed parallel to the urban David Mamet. And just these few years later (so it seems), he's an American classic of dysfunction, loneliness and despair.

	Tony Bingham and Erica Highberg play ex-lovers in Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love." Click photo for larger image. 'Fool for Love' Where: Thank You, Felix Productions at Brillobox, 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. When: 8 p.m. through Sun. Tickets: $12 (discounts); 412-848-3984.

Although his family dramas ("Buried Child," "True West," "Curse of the Starving Class") are larger and greater, you can see Shepard's essence in "Fool for Love" (1983), revived for just this week in a taut, well-acted and atmospherically staged 65 minutes, by Thank You, Felix Productions.

This is the drama of passionate love played out like no-holds-barred wrestling. In a hapless motel or rented room somewhere in the rootless West, once-and-former lovers Eddie and May tear at each other like the doomed. Meanwhile, an Old Man sits off to one side, commenting occasionally, as if in another dimension, probably that of memory. And a slack young man comes to take May out on a date.

But neither of these others registers much on Eddie and May and the manic passion that drives them simultaneously together and apart, battling over past and present.

The play's title seems straightforward, describing a couple made foolish by love. But we do better to understand "fool" in the older senses of being a victim (think Romeo's "Oh, I am fortune's fool!") or dependent or jester, such as the various Fools in Shakespeare. Another analogy is to the old meaning of having a skill, preserved in phrases like "he's a fly fishing fool."

So the title might translate, "at the mercy of love" or even "sucker for love." And certainly Eddie and May are whipsawed by love's tempests. But their love isn't a storm they can opt out of. Think of the doomed passion of Phaedra or of Tristan and Iseult.

Indeed, the best analogies are ancient or primal. As such, the love in Shepard's play also partakes of the taboo, because Eddie and May are half-siblings.

As performed by Tony Bingham and Erica Highberg, who are similarly lanky and intense, they often seem two sides of the same coin. You don't need to know they're siblings (you discover that part way through; sorry to give it away) to feel something more than usually narcissistic in their passion.

Both seem perfectly matched to their roles. Sometimes there's a shifty reserve in Bingham that doesn't quite match my image of Eddie, but he boils over with danger when needed. Highberg's May is more feral, more desperate; she is an actress of quirky force.

John Gresh plays the Old Man, a Gabby Hayes cliche in appearance but with quiet presence. Is he just their father? Are they in his mind or he, unacknowledged, in theirs? Or is he also Eddie, looking back? Or all of us, catching glimpses of a passion beyond our everyday?

One interpretation would have the Old Man seize the play at the end, all its pain settling into his eyes. Not here. Director Adam Kukic keeps the focus on the tormented Eddie and May. He also gets a deftly self-effacing performance from Greg Caridi as the hapless Martin, a role that can be more robustly comic.

Nothing could be more appropriate than Renee Ickes' set, which turns the space above Brillobox into a seedy, rootless arena for heart-rending encounter. All this compact whirlwind of a play needs is more flexible lighting.

And perhaps also a shade more ferocity, which is asking a lot. Looking back at the two Pittsburgh productions I've reviewed, especially City Theatre's in 1984 with David Butler and Mary Margaret Stein but also Penn Avenue Theatre's in 2001, I discover I wanted more then, too. I guess Shepard sharpens our appetite for the primal. Bingham and Highberg come close.

The run is limited; so is the space.