“Punks” opens with a lengthy, wordless sequence in which a man quietly stalks around a squalid inner city apartment while its two inhabitants sleep. A filmy curtain hangs between the audience and the stage, making us complicit in the voyeurism. Suddenly an alarm sounds, and the pair rises from the bed in a flurry of anxiety and activity, throw on sheets like Grecian robes and alternately spar and tease each other in stilted language.

The opening scene sets a tone of ambiguity, apprehension and confusion, perhaps appropriate for the raw new play by Claudio Raygoza that explores sexuality and violence, race, shifting identities and class struggles. At its best, Ion Theatre’s “Punks” is powerful and edgy, with intense performances and a layered script that runs from the lyrical to the streetwise profound to the depraved. But in its lesser moments, scenes can drag on and the story becomes convoluted.

“Punks” is not exactly enjoyable, and it’s certainly not for everyone. While there are moments of dark and bitter humor, the production is one that leaves you exhausted and unsettled with its stark portrayal of violence, sexuality and drug use.

That’s partly what French playwright Jean Genet had in mind when he wrote “The Maids,” which is the inspiration for Raygoza’s play.

The source material for Genet’s 1947 play was the bizarre real-life story of the Papin sisters. The sisters, who worked as maids in the same household, brutally murdered their mistress and her daughter in 1933. Afterward, the sisters cleaned themselves, disrobed and curled up in bed together to await the police, prompting speculation that theirs was an incestuous lesbian relationship.

Genet’s play examines themes of class, identity and illusion, power struggles, sexual desire and alienation. The sister maids habitually take turns dressing up as their mistress in a sadomasochistic fantasy that ends with her murder. Increasingly their identities blur, as the playwright piles on layers of role-play and artifice. Genet also suggested that the sisters should be played by men, further positing identity as pretense.

Though ultimately quite different, Raygoza’s play is thematically similar. In a nod to Genet’s gender bending stage direction, director Glenn Paris has cast Robin Christ in the role of a man. Raygoza also confounds identity through sexual orientation. Jesus (Markuz Rodriguez) is soft and gentle, and gay. Cristobal (Steven Lone) is more menacing, and ostensibly straight.

The two Latino “punks” are wannabe artists and addicts living in modern day New York City, surviving any way they can – including prostitution and acting out erotic plays conceptualized by Jesus’ sugar daddy Marion (Christ), a rich older white man who likes to watch and participate in the role-playing. The identity game is heightened when Christ as Marion dresses up as a woman in the absurd play within a play.

This ensemble hits both the high and low notes of intensity, in fight scenes and quieter moments. Lone especially spits verbal fire with assured physicality. Christ could burn a hole through you with a look. In one of the best scenes, Lone grabs Rodriguez roughly by the neck and cruelly yet humorously taunts him about his failures -- which are of course his own as well.

The play turns on the tension between the young men, and between Marion and his dependents -- based in sexual identity, self-loathing, poverty, and class and racial discrepancies. Instead of culminating in the predictable ending, Raygoza subverts Genet in a major point of departure from “The Maids,” resulting in perhaps a more satisfying ending. But the protracted dueling monologues, maddeningly difficult to comprehend, are a distraction.

With directorial tweaking and script tightening, Ion Theatre could have itself a compelling, if dark and disturbing, work.