Rorschach Theatre’s production of A Bright Room Called Day does an excellent job of bringing on the tension.

Sometimes it’s during a young woman’s vehement, Reagan-hating scenes set in the early 1980s. In her fervent state of alarm and outrage, she would be just as at home standing in front of the White House today, railing against the current adminstration.

Sometimes it’s in watching the breakdown of one character, a tortured homosexual man (Alexander Strain), so glib before his fall, but eventually driven first to thoughts of suicide after being harassed by Nazi officials, and finally to a resigned but guilt-laden self-preservation instinct that keeps him from shooting Adolph Hitler when he meets him by chance in a movie theatre.

And if all else fails, well, the Devil himself shows up, too.

Truly, a lot is going on in this play, written by Tony Kushner (Angels in America), which focuses on a group of Communist-leaning intellectuals who observe and sometimes fight Hitler’s rise to power. The plot’s progression is interrupted by vingettes starring the aforementioned 80s liberal known as Zillah (Elizabeth Chomko), which Rorschach sets to video on a large screen hanging above the set. Characters are plentiful, scenes are frequently brief but awfully numerous, and the play’s occasional doses of the surreal (the devil’s appearance, a strange phantom-like visitor that haunts the apartment) can sometimes confuse rather than provoke. But overall, it is a play of thoughtful character studies and intriguing moral conflicts, and above all an impressive bit of staging and performance on Rorschach’s part.