Reena is a backup singer for a Motown group. Elly, the other protagonist in “1300 Lafayette East,” is a backup singer in her own life.

The two women forge an uneasy friendship in Brooke Berman’s play, receiving its world premiere at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, which takes place at its namesake Detroit apartment building about 20 minutes before everything changes: in 1967, before the riots scarred the face and broke the heart of the city, before the women’s movement rearranged the consciousness of America.

There’s a feeling of foreboding to “1300” that comes primarily from its audience’s knowledge of history and somewhat from its characters’ generalized sense of unease. This is a neat trick to pull off, and Berman, director Gary Anderson and a cast of five do so more or less successfully.

In a play about race relations and relations between genders, the characters are stand-ins for larger forces rather than fully realized human beings, but, as played by Lisa Lauren Smith and Sharla Mills, respectively, Reena and Elly are people playgoers can relate to. The women first meet in the lobby of what in 1967 was a new luxury high-rise, home, as the playwright informs us, to the rich and famous, including two of the Supremes. Reena is black, Elly is white; it’s a chasm, yes, but more unites them than separates them.

They’re both frustrated. Reena wants to be star. Elly is a 24-year-old housewife (remember housewives?) who doesn’t quite realize she wants more. And they’re both lonely, even though there are men who take up an inordinate amount of room in their lives. Reena’s boyfriend, who never appears onstage, is (A.) married, (B.), the bandleader who employs her and (C.), a bully. Elly’s husband, played with supercilious assurance by Andrew Papa, is a different kind of bully, not physically abusive, but seeing Elly as very much the little woman. (David has another character flaw that won’t be disclosed in this space.)

Much of the action centers on Elly’s efforts to help Reena follow her dream of stardom.

There are two other men in the play: William (Bello Pizzimenti), son of the building’s doorman, and Clive (Roosevelt Johnson), a suave music producer. Pizzimenti is especially effective in a second-act monologue in which his character, who is innocent of any wrongdoing but has been beaten by police, must decide on a course of action.

The script has some rough spots – David’s aforementioned character flaw doesn’t contribute substantially to the drama, for instance – and the production is hindered by a stage design that necessitates scene changes where the movement of furniture often seems to take longer than the scenes that follow. They’re accompanied by well-chosen music of the era and projected photographs of 1960s Detroit, but the play’s momentum is stalled.

Note: “1300 Lafayette East” is the third play I’m aware of that relates to the 1967 Detroit riots. The others are Joanna McClelland Glass’ “Palmer Park,” previously produced in Detroit and elsewhere, and Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit ’67,” produced at New York’s Public Theater and elsewhere, but so far not here.