All theater companies have their specialties, and if I were try to pigeonhole Kitchen Dog Theater, it would probably be: They tell stories of people in pain. Sometimes physical, sometimes psychic; sometimes comedies or dramas, contemporary or classic. Maybe all theater is about people in pain (not just conflict), but I don’t think so. Or at least, KDT somehow explore the pain exquisitely.

Wolf at the Door is racked with pain. It begins with Isadora (Alejandra Flores) in childbirth — one that ends badly. It progresses through a terrified, pregnant, feral woman (Kristen Kelso), who, through a series of circumstances, ends up chained to Isadora’s bed. And it gets progressively more harrowing from there.

Wolf at the Door skirts the line of magical realism with just outright kitchen sink reality. Isadora lives on a remote ranch with her maid Rocio (Dolores Godinez) and her new husband, Septimo (Ruben Carrazana); the appearance of the stranger, named Yolot, percolates with fantasy, and the constant howl of a pack of wolves in the distance bodes ominously for what it’s all about. But what we can see is no less shocking: Septimo, the seventh son of a mean man, wooed Isadora with kindness but practices his punches on her since their wedding day. The promise of a visit from her family to see the baby she miscarried is the only hedge she has against his violence. In that, if feels as grounded in today as you can imagine. The playwright, Marisela Trevino Orta, has fashioned a “message” drama around a more ethereal reverie about the afterlife, nature and the definition of evil.

Some bold choices distinguish the storytelling. While there’s no doubting Septimo is a monster, Orta doesn’t hesitate to flesh him out as a character — not to justify his behavior, but to explain it, at least a little, as the manifestation of a cycle of abuse. His own upbringing, horrendous as it was, shaped his personality — how do we judge someone whose destiny was wrought decades earlier. (Quite harshly, as it turns out.)

But while there is powerful imagery throughout, it doesn’t all quite coalesce. There are hints at this as a ghost story, as indigenous mythology, as metaphor … but they are sometimes in competition. A big “revelation” late in the show was something I had figured out early on — was it meant to be a secret? It conjures another KDT production from a few years ago, The Thrush and the Woodpecker, but doesn’t nail it as deftly. (That’s pretty high bar — Thrush was my no. 1 show of 2016.)  But the production has grown on me since seeing it, and the performances and set design (by the ever-gifted Clare Floyd Devries) make it worth the 90 minutes it takes.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

At Trinity River Arts Center through May 5. KitchenDogTheater.org.