Special to WJW

An old photograph inspired Tony Kushner to write A Bright Room Called Day. The photo showed a Nazi rally, all, save one lone woman, raising their arms in that unforgettable and sinister Nazi salute. Who was that lone woman, why was she at the rally, what happened to her?

Kushner probes what happens to the little people, the loners, the ones too fearful to act in the face of great catastrophes. First produced in 1985, A Bright Room Called Day is a provocative look at the insidious rise of Nazism and how it affects a circle of liberal-leaning leftist communists in Berlin.

But it's also about the insidious rise of cultural conservatism during the Reagan era. That Kushner has the chutzpah to equate Ronald Reagan with Adolf Hitler should come as no surprise; for this playwright, the politics of a play is the thing itself.

Rorschach Theatre's robust production is onstage through May 21 at Casa Del Pueblo's Sanctuary Theatre.

Kushner's anthemic epic, the Pulitzer and Tony award-winning Angels in America, mined the cultural currents of the 1980s, and his wide-ranging body of works ranges from adaptations of Goethe's Stella, Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan and Ansky's The Dybbuk, to stunning original works like headline-grabbing Homebody/Kabul and Caroline or Change. But A Bright Room Called Day came first and signals Kushner's politically forthright approach.

It's 1932 in Agnes Eggling's Berlin apartment. A new year on the horizon doesn't bode well, with Nazism on the rise.

Into her apartment come her band of friends: glamorous movie star Paulinka (sleek Lauren Judith Krizner), one-eyed Hungarian film electrician Husz (brusque Grady Weatherford), tough communist propagandist Annabella (a hardened Cam Magee) and mascara-wearing Baz (fey Alexander Strain, as Kushner's token homosexual). They're a rowdy bunch ‹ arguing, drinking, binging and lamenting the collapse of the good life as they've known it. Agnes, in fact, is the group's bland pragmatist. She's a communist when it's good for her, gives up on the party line when it becomes too risky.

But what's a Kushner play without a little fantasy, a ghost who comes in through the fire escape window? Clad in rags, Die Alte (Ellen Young), the old one, appears like a warning shot, a look into the future. She's what Germany's people will become ‹ starved, ragged ‹ an unwelcome beggar. And Agnes (plain-faced Lindsey Allen) is the only one who sees her. But this B-movie actress ‹ blonde, but no bombshell ‹ is impatient about helping her, barely tossing her day-old bread.

Interspliced with these sequences are the bile-filled ruminations of Zillah Katz, a 1980s New Wave teen with teased hair and a tough-as-nails attitude. These grainy, black-and-white video monologues, filmed by Weatherford, are projected above the traditional shabby floral-wallpapered apartment set designed by Jacob Muehlhausen.

Zillah's like a Greek chorus, her commentary and contextualizing adding weight to claims that the conservative right has encroached on the country, circa 1985. Zillah's reality is stark, black and white ‹ and, in equating Reagan with Hitler, more than reactionary. And exactly what Kushner wants to shake up his audiences.

Hitler advances to chancellor, the Weimer Republic falls and the politics of the new Germany are told in blunt, black-and-white title slides projected above the stage.

Agnes' world contracts. But not before she entertains another fantastical guest, the Devil (Matt Dunphy, in a brilliantly wicked turn as a spitting, vomiting maniac) ‹ another Kushner fantasy, again poetic, cinematic, imaginative, come to life.

Agnes stays put as the world around her spins out of control. Kushner's message, then, is like his plays: to be active, to promote change, not to remain placid in a shabby city apartment as the world collapses.

A Bright Room Called Day is a call to act before it's too late. A half -century ago in Germany, too many offered too little too late, the playwright suggests. But, through Zillah (Elizabeth Chomko), Kushner's contemporary, prophetic voice, the time for action, he intones, must be now.

While the work is two decades old, it retains its particular currency. That adventurous, modest Rorschach Theatre does this work justice is no surprise. Even on a shoestring and in an unusual location ‹ the former worship space in the original Calvary Methodist Church, now Casa Del Pueblo's Sanctuary Theatre ‹ Rorschach's first-time director Rahaleh Nassri works wonders with a complex script. Aided by a strong cast, helmed particularly by Allen's restrained and confused Agnes, the ensemble speaks truth to the powerful words Kushner penned.

A Bright Room Called Day is onstage through May 21 (Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays) at The Sanctuary Theatre, Casa Del Pueblo Methodist Church in the District. Tickets, $12-$18, are available by calling 202-452-5538.

Lisa Traiger writes frequently on the performing arts.