Review: It’s goose steps vs. guffaws in Six Points Theater’s witty comedy ‘Just for Us’

If humor is a superpower, is it powerful enough to defeat a den of Nazis?

That’s one of the questions hanging over “Just for Us,” playwright Alex Edelman’s solo show that’s up in an engrossing must-see production by Six Points Theater in St. Paul. The company is celebrating its 30th anniverary and “Us” is a worthy offering of its gifts.

Edelman is a Jewish comedian who, after being trolled online by white supremacists, decides to infiltrate their meeting in a New York apartment. Jews are white in America, right?

Also recorded by the author as an HBO special, “Us” dives in headfirst in a search for answers. The show has lots of witty detours and sidenotes, and also a recognition that it’s not only photons that can occupy two positions at once.

Expertly directed by J.C. Cutler, this Minnesota production stars Ryan London Levin as Edelman. With excellent timing and expressive physicality, Levin skillfully distills a script that’s essentially a stand-up comedy act crafted for the legit theater stage.

Without giving away spoilers, the script is studded with quirky but germane observations. Things start with an anecdote about Koko the lowland gorilla who famously learns sign language and befriends Robin Williams. On being told, in sign language, about Williams’ death, the gorilla emotes.

“Us” marvels at Williams’ comic prowess — and his ability to cross the species barrier — with the implicit lament about the intractable walls that humans have intraspecies.

The story also takes jaunts into other bits, including one about the author’s brother, AJ. Improbably, he became a winter Olympian, competing in the skeleton race for Israel. Likening Israel’s winter Olympics entry to Jamaica’s, which famously was captured in the film “Cool Runnings,” Edelman hails his brother’s “shul runnings.” I thought it was funny.

But the meat of “Us” is the apartment meeting where the bigots gather in a semicircle: 12 men, five women, with names like Jigsaw Lady, Cortez, Whit and Chelsea. There’s also the newcomer who arouses Cortez’s virulent suspicion. “What’s your heritage?” they want to know. “Where are your people from?”

Edelman negotiates the meeting with deft deflections. He also has a desire to please his new associates and finds himself craving their approval. Eventually, like all of us at some point in our lives, he finds the fortitude to be true to something, even if it puts his life at risk.

“Us” is a funny comedy. So, by all means, go for the laughs. But it’s also a sly, sideways entrée into a world of gnarly questions as tense-making and as urgent as any posed by the bigots in that meeting. What’s white? What’s this white privilege? And what does our obsessive racial stratification and hierarchy mean at this critical moment?

There’s much talk today about history, about taking us back or going forward. All of that conversation ultimately is about what kind of nation we want to be, and whether the patterns of the past serve as prologue to our new future.

After being opened up by humor, “Us” goes for the jugular. “To whom do we owe our empathy?” Edelman asks poignantly. “Does everyone deserve our care and understanding?”

When: 1 p.m. Tue., 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Thu., 8 p.m. Sat., 1 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 10.

Where: Highland Park Community Center, 1978 Ford Pkwy., St Paul.

Tickets: $28-$40. 651-647-4315. sixpointstheater.org.