Play review: Powerful "Groundswell" chills by degrees

Envy, vengeance, redemption — those elements condense like a noxious fog in “Groundswell,” the compact, provocative thriller now onstage at the Old Globe Theatre.

The actual fog that socks in the setting of Ian Bruce’s play — a lonely guesthouse on a remote coast of South Africa — remains unseen. But the play does plenty to convey its sense of oppression, mirrored in the way the three characters seem trapped by the past and their inability to see a way through to some resolution.