WILLIAMSTON, MI–Those things that are most true and realistic can also be the most absurd and ludicrous.

In Predictor, now running at Williamston Theatre, playwright Jennifer Blackmer leans into the absolute absurdity of what one woman went through to bring to market an invention that would change lives in profound ways. The play tells the true story of Meg Crane, a 26-year-old graphic designer, who created the first home pregnancy test.

Blackmer unflinchingly shows Meg’s crusade in the face of sexism, corporate timidity, political opposition and bullying. She commits to comedic choices and a fast-paced, theatrical story. This is no staid biopic. It is a wild ride through an almost unbelievable story.

While the play lasts approximately 90 minutes with one 15-minute intermission, the action from start to finish takes place in about 30 seconds, with flashbacks and an epilogue filling the rest of the time.

Predictor feels far more relevant than it ought to be. Blackmer invites us to laugh at the ridiculous hurdles women had to jump in the 1960s and the 1970s, but there is a constant feeling of unease that, 60 years later, the progress made is under threat.

We laugh because if we don’t, we might despair.

The cast is larger than what Williamston typically puts on their stage, with Caitlin Cavannaugh playing Meg and six other actors filling out the “chorus.”

Cavannaugh almost never leaves the stage and jumps back and forth through time as the other actors swirl around her, pulling her from one scene to the next, raising the stakes with nearly every encounter.

Meg is a different sort of heroine, and Cavannaugh embraces the challenge of playing someone who often presents as taciturn and reserved, shy about speaking or engaging in conflict except when pushed past her limit. It’s crucial to the character and the plot, building critical effectiveness into one of the final conflicts where the accusations thrown at her are so clearly false.

Cavannaugh captures Meg’s introversion, making even her silences simmer with energy.

Director Billicia Charnelle Hines keeps a tight rein on every scene, never shying away from the breakneck pacing that the play’s structure demands. She emphasizes each scene’s theatricality, mixing in contrasting styles and moods from realism to absurdity from farce to intimate drama. She moves the action quickly and seamlessly from Meg’s lonely drive to solve the puzzle of the test to the corporate throng of a pitch meeting.

Hines constantly pushes the narrative forward even as the action careens from a game show to a church to offices to a paternal, condescending infomercial on menstruation. The skill at which Hines conducts all this action keeps the audience entertained and laughing while never letting the meaningful undertone disappear.

The members of the “chorus,” whom the narrators sometimes name as “Actor 1” or “Actor 5” each play several roles with the women taking on multiple genders, sometimes amusingly indicated by false mustaches.

One of Mona Eldahshoury’s characters is Meg’s artistic roommate who inspires her to tap into her muse and reminds her why she cannot give up. She also tautly and sensitively plays a member of the company’s typing pool in a heartbreaking scene that reminds the audience why this invention matters.

Kamara Miller Drane effectively provides background and depth into Meg’s character as her mother, a conservative, religious woman who is concerned about image and strict in her demands on Meg’s behavior.

Chris Purchis is particularly amusing as the nun who was Meg’s teacher in her youth, clearly playing favorites. She also has a lovely scene toward the end with her real-life husband Tobin Hissong where they play a couple talking about the difference Meg’s invention had in their life.

Hissong takes on many of the older men in the cast, from Meg’s tolerant and understanding father to the well-meaning but misguided executive at Organon Pharmaceuticals. Each character was complete and separate and he moved between them with subtle changes in tone and movement.

Ryan Patrick Welsh’s role of the hotshot brought in to manage the project that Meg conceived and created was the perfect foil to the young inventor. He fearlessly embodied all that was reprehensible about so many businessmen in corporate America up through the 1980s and beyond. He’s arrogant, dismissive and blatantly sexist. He uses the slimiest of arguments and, for many women “of a certain age” in the audience, brought back too-real memories of the specious arguments and abusive behaviors that they had to endure.

James Kuhl’s characters provided a reminder that not all men fell into the categories of evil or oblivious. His Ira, who would go on to become Meg’s life partner, was likeable and charismatic. He also made a delightfully nerdy scientist with a bit of a lisp.

Integrated into all the work that the actors did was the equally creative and disciplined output of the technical crew. It’s a cliché that when technicians are at their best, you don’t notice their work, but there is much about the design of this show that hearkens to that truth. The set and its dressing, (scenic design by Thalia Lara and props and set dressing by Michelle Raymond) while brightly colored in swirls of 1960s yumminess, appears minimalist. There’s a table, some chairs and a relatively flat wall backing the stage.

Moments into the show, it is revealed that the wall is not merely a backdrop. It is a working, dynamic set that does heavy lifting throughout the show. It’s filled with life and shapes pop open to perform multiple functions. Complex and richly detailed projections by Jeromy Hopgood take the audience from one location to the other.

The seemingly simple pieces of furniture get scooted about the space effectively creating and recreating numerous locations. And everything moves at a whirlwind pace.

Brian Cole captures the tonal signature for the 1960s with his selection of music, blending well with the set’s colors and Shannon T. Schweitzer’s lighting to create the aesthetic of the period. Likewise, Mona Jahani mingled mod fashion and classic conservative wear that assisted in creating the multiple characters and aided the projection of Meg’s growth.

While Meg Crane invented the home pregnancy test in 1967 using a paper clip holder, eye dropper and mirror, it did not hit the U.S. markets until 1977 and it wasn’t until 2012 that she received any sort of public credit for her role in revolutionizing society. Predictor invites audiences to remember the hurdles women have had to overcome and how very recently in history bodily autonomy was denied them. It emits more than a few warnings that it would take little to tip us back to that world.