DETROIT Mich.—In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I know, and like, Alabama Story playwright Kenneth Jones who, before he moved to New York, was the theater critic at the Detroit News.

Now that that’s out of the way…

It’s been a good year for librarians, at least in non-fiction literature. There is the book “The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts” whose title suggests its subject, and there is Jones’ play Alabama Story, whose title requires a little explanation.

In 1959 Emily Reed, who headed Alabama’s library system, came in conflict with a segregationist state senator over an illustrated children’s book, Garth Williams’ “The Rabbits’ Wedding.” The book is about two rabbits who get married: one is white, one is black.

The story of the politician and the aptly named librarian, a cause celebre at the time, might have been forgotten if Jones hadn’t read Emily Reed’s obituary in 2000. Jones recognizes a good story when he sees one and, in Alabama Story, he tells one that’s even better.

The play is itself a wedding—of fact and fiction—and has been produced from coast (Cape Cod) to, well, Utah. Jamie Warrow’s staging at the Theatre Company represents its Michigan premiere. It’s being presented, as is the Theatre Company’s entire season, in the spiffy black-box Marlene Boll Theatre at the Downtown Detroit Y.

Before there’s much action, Melinda Pacha’s costumes boldly proclaim 1950s. As librarian Reed, Melissa Beckwith wears glasses, a dark green suit and her hair (probably a wig) is done up in decorous, reined-in curls. As the senator, Daniel Jaroslaw, is in a three-piece suit and two-toned (black-and-tan) shoes.

Warrow has her actors speak in the deliberate, almost formal way movie actors of the 50s spoke. Beckwith, who is terrific, walks with small, purposeful steps and pinches her voice a bit, as if constrained by the strictures of place and time.

It must be tempting to play up the self-righteous bluster of the senator on the wrong side of history, but Jaroslaw will have none of that and, frankly, neither will Jones. For all his noxiousness, the character has redeeming qualities – not many, but part of him actually likes books – and the actor and playwright (and director) ensure that he’s more than one-dimensional.

Excellent, too, is Andrew Papa who faces the distinctive challenge of playing author-illustrator Garth Williams with consistent self-effacing sarcasm, and an infirm and aged segregationist who undergoes a subtle transformation and begins to see light.

There are other characters and a couple of subplots. The very good Alexander Kendziuk plays Reed’s young assistant, Thomas, a son of the Old South who, though he doesn’t fully realize it, represents the New South. Similarly, Sidney Mains and DeShawn King, play childhood friends cruelly separated (she’s white, he’s black) who meet again as adults and come to represent things as they might be.

Both the script and the production have their flaws. There are at least four inadvertent false endings before the final tableau, and a few lines are swallowed that are directed away from the audience.

Jones’ “Story” is historical but it isn’t only about the past. There are censors and book-burners among us, and those who believe one ethnicity is superior to another. You will come away from Alabama Story feeling glad that you’re not one of them, and maybe a little wary.

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