DETROIT–I don’t think I’m alone in having doubts about how much I would enjoy a play titled: Homeless and How We Got That Way. Homelessness is one of those conditions that few of us want thrown up in our faces, especially on a summery Friday night.

If you share the same pre-disposition, get rid of it. This new play, written by Dan McCormick, and having its first real post-workshop premiere at The Detroit Repertory Theatre, manages to be authentic, charming, confrontational and provocative all at once.

It is a fairly simple, straightforward two-person drama. Sidney, played by Robert Vogue Williams, is an African-American homeless man sitting in an stony, green alcove, with bench. It could be alongside a brick footbridge in Central Park. The play is set in New York City. He is soon joined by Eloise, a younger white woman played by Leah Smith.

What unfolds is the story of both these individuals. Though thirty years apart in age, and of different races, what binds the two is that they each had respected, even celebrated, lives, careers, homes, families. What drove them to homelessness is alcohol. And anyone who is, or has been close, to an unrehabilitated alcoholic knows that it doesn’t make sense, except to another alcoholic.

A good part of the play is spent with the two talking about booze, and gradually getting inebriated. But along that long day’s journey into night and sleep for these two, we are let into their secrets–painful secrets–that they open up about to one another as they get drunker. These are secrets that both claim to keep hidden from everyone, but the truth is that they have probably said them out loud many times to one another, and to others, but don’t remember doing so. That’s what happens with wet, homeless drunks, whose objective every day is to get something to eat, wash up somewhere, and get drunk again–to feed their addiction and forget what they have spent a lifetime trying to forget.

But there is more to that in the soul of any homeless drunk. And that’s what this play is about. It’s about shattering assumptions we make everyday about people who have less than we do, or appear weaker than us. There is much more beyond our quick, passing judgements.

Both Ms. Smith and Mr. Vogue-Williams are terrific, with very tight, authentically written dialogue by Mr. McCormick. Smith finds the core of Eloise–walking a tightrope of clinging to her past glory as a writer, and falling face-first into the sodden life she is living. What is authentic is that no matter how much she may care for Sidney as a park buddy, his real value is that he has three pints of booze and something to eat. He is indispensable for the day, but entirely disposable to her. It’s rough, but authentic. Mr. Williams also harbors great pain that comes out, and he has adult kids that want nothing to do with him. He delivers Sidney’s world-weary, emotionally beaten self with total cred. We believe them both, and the play wouldn’t work if there was a gap in their believability.

The players are directed by Lynch Travis, who has done very well to lead two actors with great chops in this moving day-long journey that is compressed into about two hours with a ten-minute intermission. Harry Wetzel created the set, which authentically captures just the sort of corner of the world that homeless people make their regular haunt. The actual set painting is fine as it goes. I might have liked to have seen three dimensional set pieces with actual materials used, but allowances can be made for budget. Sandra Landfair handles costuming, and the two actors looked every inch homeless.

The revelations about Sidney’s and Eloise’s lives are gripping and at times some of the hardest stuff we can hear about another person. But both the material, and the actors’ performances, keep it all from being a huge unrelenting downer. In fact, while the pain and addiction is always on display, these characters have charm and humor even as they lay themselves open to us.

Bottom line: Terrific material delivered by actors who have a total grasp of it.

Click here for show days, times and details.