In the interest of full disclosure, I believe Caryl Churchill is our greatest living playwright. I aspire in my own art to craft plays as intellectually complex, emotionally devastating, and artistically graceful as hers. As a scholar, I frequently write about her work as seminal to theatrical history. So when I heard that New York Theatre Workshop was reviving Light Shining in Buckinghamshire – her 1976 deep-dive into the religious and political causes and consequences of the English Civil War – I was all in.

For an American production in 2018, there would be many hurtles to clear. First, as a nation, we are barely familiar with our own Civil War of the 19th century, so the English Civil War of the 17th century would even more remote. Second, much of the play is culled from the historical record, so the play recreates the theological and philosophical mulling of the period. Third, a Churchill play is never a straight forward affair. There is much overlapping dialogue, scenes frequently have elliptical endings, and the silences often convey as much meaning as the dialogue.

All that said, Light Shining is a remarkably resonant play for the present moment. The play dramatizes a country breaking apart. The old order is fraying, but there is also a utopian hope for a better future. Churchill brilliantly elides the spiritual and secular as the characters, many from the lower classes, try to put their mark on history, to find a place in God’s dominion. But that utopian agenda runs aground in the Putney Debates, a long scene that concludes Act I and is the lynchpin of the play. The small “d” democratic possibilities of the war against King are extinguished as Oliver Cromwell and his allies take control of the policy agenda. Cromwell merely takes Charles I’s place and institutes a government that is even more authoritarian than the executed king’s. American audiences should be particularly attuned to how property rights eclipse individual rights.

Rachel Charkin, star director of NYTW and helmer of the exceptional Hadestown, keeps the proceedings crisp, clean, and clear. She expertly blends anachronistic elements into the historical setting to anchor the audience to the fact that though the events portrayed are historical they are relevant to our contemporary political discourse. She employs a tight ensemble of six actors while disposing of the original play’s conceit of having multiple actors play the same role. The diverse cast superbly builds this obscure world pretty much with their voices and bodies alone. I was excited to see Rob Campbell in the cast. He ranks as one of the strongest Churchill actors on this side of the Atlantic, having done such admirable work in the playwright’s Mad Forest many years ago at the Cherry Lane Theater and MTC.

James Baldwin once wrote: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” Light Shining demonstrates on stage how so much of we are guided by hundreds of years of history, how it is present in all we do. It also shows how utopian ideals failed in the past while offering, in its final moment (played evocatively by Mikêah Ernest Jennings), a way forward in the future.