Even its title vibrates vertiginously with layers of meaning. Most literally, “White Noise,” Suzan-Lori Parks’s enthrallingly thought-packed new play at the Public Theater, refers to the whoosh generated by those much-used, soothing sound makers designed to lull people to sleep.

Such a device, we learn early in this astringent and eloquent work from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Topdog/Underdog,” was a gift to an insomniac in his 30s named Leo (a smashing Daveed Diggs), who hasn’t had a good night’s rest since he was 5.

It worked. It also backfired, to the point that this anxious young artist stopped making art. Blessed unconsciousness, it appears, is not a state that Leo can afford to be in it right now.

Nor, it seems, can any American, not when it comes to dealing with people of other skin colors. That’s true even — no, especially — of those who pride themselves on their comfort with interracial relationships. Like the two couples at the center of Ms. Parks’s play, which opened on Wednesday and has been directed with a radiant clarity by Oskar Eustis.