Edward Carr (Ed Harris) is a plainspoken, salt-of-the-earth businessman, the kind of guy who says things like “believe you me” and “I was over the moon and then some.” He displays no vices besides ever-present unfiltered Camels, and he adores his wife.

By the end of “Wrecks,” Neil LaBute’s deceptively congenial one-man drama, we have learned a good deal about both Edward and his beloved Mary Josephine Carr, who has just died of cancer. She was a good bit older than Edward, and she was unhappily married when the two met. Edward, who as a foster child longed to wrestle control over his own future, instantly set his sights on wooing and winning her, and the courtship resulted in what Edward describes as a loving, passionate marriage of some 30 years.

“Let it all out in public and everybody gives you a hankie and their best wishes,” he says scornfully of the mourners at Mary Jo’s funeral. (The play is set in the funeral parlor, designed with austere elegance by Klara Zieglerova.) Letting it all out is clearly not Edward’s style, at least not in public. His flat delivery ratchets with unexpected speed into bristling sarcasm or anger, his conversational stance dipping into a defensive crouch.

With his lined forehead and clenched fists, Mr. Harris paints a compelling portrait of a capable, self-sufficient man laid low. And Mr. LaBute, who has not always served as his own best director, keeps a tight rein on the pacing as well as on Mr. Harris’s terse, defiant performance.

The two take care to make Edward pleasant enough but not too likable. This has a lot to do with a bit of 11th-hour trickery at the end of “Wrecks.” Such plot twists have calcified into a somewhat unfortunate trademark for the prolific Mr. LaBute, but this time he springs a pair of surprises. You may see the first one coming: Hints are sprinkled throughout Edward’s chronicle, and the title makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Mr. LaBute is paying homage to an old, frequently told tale, much the way he updated the ancient stories of Medea and Iphigenia in his “bash: latter-day plays.”

But then there’s the second twist. Without giving anything away, Mr. LaBute — whose portrayal of male-female relationships have raised eyebrows ever since his 1997 film “In the Company of Men” — has taken this classic love story (of sorts) and shifted the power dynamic drastically toward the male half. This new bombshell will supply Mr. LaBute’s detractors with yet another piece of ammunition, but it’s absolutely consistent with Edward’s driven personality. (Mr. LaBute pushes his luck, however, by having Edward coyly refuse to share with the audience his final momentous words to Mary Jo, a device transparently designed to get people talking on the ride home.)

“Wrecks” sags a bit in the middle, but the play’s overall emotional intensity and Mr. Harris’s carefully constructed performance are strong enough to withstand this. Adult love may have its vindictive and punitive components, “Wrecks” suggests, but it also offers a shelter from what Edward gracefully calls “the happenstance of life.” On the heels of his “Fat Pig” and “This Is How It Goes,” Mr. LaBute is turning into, of all things, a romantic. Once he’s ready to say goodbye to his beloved trick endings and harness his unsparing vision to less strained situations, he may just have a great love story in him.

***

Les Freres Corbusier has added a strange and sinfully entertaining new chapter to its repertoire with “Hell House,” based on the popular evangelical-Christian take on haunted houses in which each scare imparts a stern admonition against ungodly behavior. What’s strange is that the cheeky young company — which has earned a reputation for its technologically savvy, intellectually irreverent entertainments — claims to be playing it totally straight this time, working straight from a Hell House kit licensed by its author, Pastor Keenan Roberts, for performance. The result is more than a little creepy and oddly captivating.

A cowled tour guide leads a crowd through a series of rooms, each one devoted to various Bible-unfriendly acts. Abortions, reading Harry Potter books, gay marriage, even impious humor (this last scene, titled “The Ironists,” takes place in a Brooklyn coffeehouse): Each of these results in a quick trip to hell. The audience is ultimately led to the devil himself, who invites others to join him. But before he can claim any souls, an angel ushers the crowd toward a beatific Jesus and redemption for anyone who wants it.

In a traditional Hell House, it is at this point that attendees are asked one by one to confirm or reconfirm their allegiance to Jesus; the official kit boasts a “33 percent salvation and re-dedication rate.” Les Freres has removed this part, replacing it with a faux church basement social, complete with an upbeat Christian folk-pop group and glasses of punch.

And the quality of the actual material? Well, Pastor Roberts is looking to win souls, not OBIE Awards.The guide’s patter consists largely of puns out of a grade-C horror movie (“Now it’s time for your class trip … to hell!”) and actual scares are in short supply, Les Freres has ditched its usual high-tech gloss and embraces the form’s cheapo effects and broad mwa-ha-ha performances.

But worst of all, Satan is no fun here. I can’t think of another work of fiction in which the devil offers so little in terms of compensatory pleasure: “If you choose to serve me,” he offers, “I’ll crucify your soul.”We never see a character derive a minute of enjoyment from their Harry Potter books or their raves or even from sex. If sinning was always this boring, there wouldn’t be a market for any hell houses, let alone the 3,000 that have opened nationwide in the last decade.

There is one exception to the overall mirthlessness: those insidious ironists. Not the ones on stage — they only manage a few lame jokes about the Onion before a trio of “demon imps” drag them to Hades — but the ones in the audience. With the exception of one (unfunny) wisecracking hipster in my group, everyone dutifully moved from room to room, taking in each tableau with little response beyond suppressed giggles and the occasional dumbfounded stare.

Until the final room, that is. Behind the refreshments was “Pin the Sin on Jesus,” which consisted of an easel with Jesus’s picture and several strips of paper; one could “confess” a sin and thumbtack it onto the photo. On that night, sincere confessions were outnumbered by at least a 5-to-1 ratio. Among the entries: “I think,” “I’m Jewish,” and several alluding to the evangelical Christian currently living in the White House. Even with nearly 100 people involved in putting on this “Hell House,” Les Freres may need a few more of those demon imps for its Brooklyn stay.

“Wrecks” until November 19 (425 Lafayette St., between West Fourth Street and Astor Place, 212-260-2400).

“Hell House” until October 29 (38 Water St. at Dock Street, Brooklyn, 718-254-8779).