Wow. Every once in a while, Producing Director Janet Arnold throws a curve at her subscriber’s heads and dares them to belt it out of the park. Ernest Joselovitz’s intense play Vilna’s Got a Golem is one of those scripts. It’s funny, and it has some good jokes, but this play goes where Neil Simon fears to tread, and it’s a trip Arnold hopes we’re all willing to take. There’s little to tell you in the literature just how far this play goes to make a point, and one might even feel misled if attending on the pretext of seeing a lighthearted comedy about a mud and chicken wire monster hewn to seek vengeance on the Christians who have tormented the Jews for eons. Some of the descriptions of violence on both Jews and Christians edges on stomach-turning. Don’t let that deter you, though: just be warned. What awaits if you do step up to the plate are great performances, creative direction, and weighty issues that are as pertinent today as 1504s Vilna was to the ragtag traveling band of players who recreate it in 1899 Russia.

This is a cathartic play told through slapstick and silliness, a play within a play that presents the sixteenth century story of Zavel (Noah Todd), broken by the random killing of his wife and unborn child by a mob of Christians, and his best friend Zebi (Michael Tassoni), drawn into Zavel’s plan to create a Golem, a soulless man of clay to kill the Christians who have oppressed the Jews. Over the protests of a wise Rabbi (Mike Lawler) and Zebi’s common sense-drive wife Vasha (Frances Anita Rivera), the Golem is created and wreaks havoc on the Christians, causing fear and respect. But the play beyond this play tells of the acting troupe in 1899 presenting this piece under the watchful eye of a Russian official who can’t speak Yiddish. He is fed a tamer version of the play. The play takes a dark turn after a wildly comedic open and spends a lot of time debating the fate of the Jews when they are no longer the oppressed race. Calling the play a comedy is not addressing the deeper movement of Joselovitz’s script.

Director Daniel Schay has asked his troupe to be big and broad during the comedy and somber and uncomfortably realistic during the descriptive and active carnage. As the plot winds to its preordained climax, he uses Thom Gilseth’s period-specific scenic design as well as including a gifted musician (the impressive and well-traveled Yonatan Miller) and AJTC’s longtime sound designer Bill Osborne onstage to keep the theatricality ever-present. However, he has asked Erik H. Reid to create a lighting design that is pure 21st century effect to compliment the modernity of Joselovitz’s thoroughly non-19th century dialogue.

The cast responds well to Schay’s rollercoaster of choices. Todd uses his dual roles of golem-creator and playwright of the play within a play to brood over wrongs past and wrongs to come. His sulking manner and dour state are well-modulated. Tassoni’s constant sideways movement between slapstick and philosophical as the flummoxed best friend and the playwright’s real life brother is completely well-timed. Lawler is always dependable when asked to make light or prophesy doom, and is a good choice for Zeizel. Rivera is quite funny as the always scheming Vasha. Bruce Miles portrays a host of comedic roles broadly, but his final turn as the Christian Mayor is an excellently haunting creation. Dijan Cain and Drea Pruseau carry off the smaller roles with aplomb, and Kirby Soderberg is to be commended for his mostly silent but effective portrayal of the golem.

Gail Wolfenden-Steib’s costumes capture the flavor of a traveling Yiddish Theatre company, and her creation for the golem is particularly impressive in keeping the period while creating a mood.