Cyclone delivers a slice of life in small-town New Jersey???not horse country or even Tony Soprano territory, but industrial-wasteland New Jersey, where the only things to do are toil at dead-end jobs and chase inchoate dreams. Ron Fitzgerald's play takes place days after a local policeman is shot, and revolves around the effects of his death on his son, Mitch (Linklater), and the cop???s partner, Martin (Davidson). Fitzgerald tells the story in a string of loosely connected scenes in which Mitch sorts through his feelings and Martin tries to restore order to his world.

Much of the action consists of apparently random conversations: Mitch and his neighbor (James Hendricks) talk about dogs; Martin and a bartender (Michael Cullen) mull over The Price Is Right; Mitch's girlfriend, Erin (Ireland), enthuses about what it would feel like to run someone over. You're never quite sure what's coming next, yet by the end Fitzgerald has built a mosaic that underscores his characters' sense that life is something that happens to them, not something they can control.

The cast of seven is uniformly strong under director Brian Mertes's sturdy hand, and several secondary characters shine???particularly Lucas Papaelias as a convenience-store clerk who is convinced that getting shot is the best thing that ever happened to him. Cyclone is produced by The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli, and while Garden Staters might wish that he'd turn his attention to another locale, he offers the rest of us a lot to appreciate, albeit from a safe distance.