A Goodman Theater world premiere, “The Long Red Road” is largely set on a South Dakota reservation, but it needn’t be: its atrocities have no clear kinship with the historical pains of the Native American people. The reservation is one of a number of guideposts meant to lend perspective to the events unfolding here, but none give the play the meaning it needs.

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s presence in the director’s chair will likely bring out the crowds, but Brett C. Leonard’s script, a scattershot roundup of emotional abuses studded with a few chaotically beautiful passages, is too uneven to elicit consistent performances.

Rotting on the Dakota reservation is Sam (Tom Hardy), a walking, drinking death wish. Floundering in his alcoholic wake are a dead daughter and a maimed ex-wife, both victims of his drunk driving, and a brother, Bob, whose damage manifests itself in less visible ways.

Eugene Lee’s smartly designed set uses shared space to balance the action between Bob’s Kansas home and Sam’s hovel, where he lives with his girlfriend, Annie (Greta Honold), who is another uncomfortable device. She’s fashioned herself as Sam’s savior, but the man hates himself so much he can’t even sleep on a bed.

Her devotion is a mystery — a brief mention of Sam’s presumed precursor, her adored alcoholic father, is thin stuff — and the play is weaker for its central relationship never being adequately untangled. In Sam’s shadow, Annie’s role doesn’t grow beyond that of a long-suffering saint.

The other women in the play suffer a similar plight, though Sam’s surviving daughter, Tasha (Fiona Robert), has her moments. She’s just a tank-topped teen-in-peril, until she shares the stage with her beloved, long-absent father. As he retreats, she advances, seized by a helpless, heartbreaking gravitational pull.

Hardy, too, shines in their interaction. Much has been made of the British film actor’s Chicago stage debut, and he displays a verbose volatility that beats against the dogged survival tactics of the rest of the ensemble.

But too much weight rests on the character’s shoulders: despite flashes of a decaying raconteur’s charm, his power to suck reasonable people into his toxic orbit confounds. He and the rest of this depressing crew speak in cruel, intimate idioms developed long before the events of the play, leaving the audience to uncover why these people fight, why they love, why they repel or attract each other. And too often, Leonard’s left these questions unanswered, and beyond the reach of coherent interpretation.