Olivia Washington and Lakisha May Photo by Marc J. Franklin

The play is set in a Harlem flat in 1964. Bebop jazz music plays from the portable record player, but it cannot muffle the sounds of the reverberating riots outside. The apartment's living room is in bohemian disarray and serves as the art studio of Bill Jameson (Grantham Coleman). Paintings of the giants of African American history line the theater's wall, and just some of the subjects include Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and white abolitionist John Brown.

Currently, Bill is working on a triptych that when completed will represent the three aspects of Black womanhood. The pinnacle image, as he tells the eccentric and hanger-on Oldtimer (Milton Craig Nealy), is the metaphorical "Wine in the Wilderness." She is, Bill explains, "Mother Africa, regal, Black womanhood in her noblest form." The second painting, with its depiction of a child in a Sunday dress and shy grin, signifies "Black girlhood."

The third canvas will feature the flipside of Black beauty and youth, "the lost woman ... what the society has made of our women." According to Bill, this woman is "ignorant, unfeminine, coarse, rude," and in short, "A chick that ain't fit for nothin' but to ... to ... just pass her by."

Bill's friends Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) and his wife Cynthia (Lakisha May) are at a bar and believe they have found the perfect model for the final part of the triptych. Without divulging their reasons for introducing her to Bill, they bring Tommy, whose real name is "Tomorrow," to Bill's apartment, and the artist agrees that she would be ideal for his chef d'oeuvre.

Tommy ends up spending the night, and by morning, when she discovers how Bill, Sonny-man, and Cynthia actually regard her, she exposes their condescension, snobbishness and classism. For all their talk about racial uplift and revolution, they are as dismissive of Oldtimer (whose real name they don't even know) and Tommy as white people are.

Surprisingly, Wine in the Wilderness is often anthologized but rarely performed. Under the assured and exceptional direction of LaChanze, who appeared in a production of Childress's Trouble in Mind on Broadway a few years ago, the play has found its perfect interpreter. LaChanze's conceptualization is supported by a top-notch design team. Arnulfo Maldonado's sets, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew's lighting, and Bill Toles's sound immerse the audience in the turbulence of Harlem in the 1960s while avoiding sensationalism. Dede Ayite's costumes and Nikiya Mathis's wigs and hair design exquisitely capture both the era in which the characters live and the politics they espouse through their sartorial choices.

As Oldtimer, Nealy is suitably rascally and adorable. Proudly showing off the loot he has obtained from the riots in the streets, he appears to be a precursor to the cantankerous and idiosyncratic older characters in August Wilson's dramas. Brantly and May offer appropriately layered performances as the husband and wife who fashion themselves as defiant activists but are steeped in bourgeois values.

Coleman is excellent as the quintessential mansplainer, Bill. The character sees himself as a visionary artist, but his liberal perspective is at odds with his reductive and patronizing attitudes toward Black women. When Tommy makes Bill realize that his attitudes forged in childhood are misguided, not only does Coleman's tone change, but so does his physical presence. Miraculously, the cluttered artist's studio feels more expansive and inclusive.

Indisputably, the standout performance belongs to Washington. The moment she arrives on stage, she is transfixing. At first, she is raucously funny, and in turn, she is both alluring and heartbreaking as she undergoes a Pygmalion-like metamorphosis. As a voice for the underclass and racially oppressed, she elicits gasps and cheers. Although Washington's name is usually followed by some form of description indicating she is the daughter of Denzel, make no mistake, this is no nepo-baby casting. We seem to be witnessing a career-making performance regardless of her surname, and it is not to be missed.

In February 1969, a month before the play premiered as part of a television episode, Childress wrote: "The time is over for asking or even demanding human rights, in or out of the theater. We no longer ask for manhood or womanhood or dignity; all we can do is express what we have to the degree we have it." As this new production potently demonstrates, the time is now for Wine in the Wilderness.