It’s an unsettling opening scene: actor Gregory Fenner silently dons a noose strung from a tree in as he steps into the role of Darnell. When the spotlight hits him, he lifts his head to speak, and Stacy Osei-Kuffour’s Hang Man takes flight as a play.

Darnell is hanging from a tree in rural Mississippi - a repugnant image that has been seared into our national consciousness. But he is really two characters: Darnell, the corpse, and, when he lifts his head and opens this mouth to address the audience, he becomes Darnell the commentator, letting us know that there is more to this story than what we might surmise. Along the way, he hands out clues to keep us off track. “Can’t a black man just commit suicide?” he suggests at one point. (But it’s not that, either.)

Hang Man can touch this “third rail” image because of Osei-Kuffour’s fearless artfulness. The character Darnell and Fenner’s performance are among the highlights of the play. Notably, Darnell speaks sparingly, occasionally addressing the audience, and carrying on lengthier conversations with his young niece.

At one point, opening his eyes, Darnell lifts his head and says, “I like living in Mississippi. It’s pretty.” Then he resumes his corpse-ly repose. I wished that we had heard even more from him.

In fact, Darnell is on stage throughout the play – though the spotlight is not always on him. He goes back into the character of corpse after he has his say, or speaks lovingly to his favorite young niece, G (Mariah Sydnei Gordon is excellent). And G is the play’s Everyman.

To avoid a spoiler, we won’t want to give more away on Darnell’s story, but suffice it to say Osei-Kuffour has packed this character, and the play, with ironic commentary, giving us characters that are parodies of types, some of them ripped right out of the news pages. Because they are largely inept, we don’t take them too seriously.

There are black types: Sage (Jennifer Glass), hard bitten and tough (and G’s stern but loving mom) who has adopted a cowgirl persona and dances in a local country bar. And Jahaad (Martel Manning is terrific), recently converted to Islam, and just released from incarceration (he was jailed for stealing Beany Baby’s!). Jahaad, is tracking down Darnell to collect a gambling debt, falls for Sage, who holds him at bay: “I ain’t bringing no ghetto Muslim to a honty tonk with me!” she tells him.

There are white types: Paul D’Addario, as Archie, displays the mean-spirited emotional and physical cruelty through which white racism is expressed. Andy Fleischer, as his sidekick Wipp, a deputy sheriff, is an unrestrained send-up of white yokels. Archie and Wipp also share both a bro mentality, and a love interest in Margarie.

And finally there is an outlier, a trans-racial type, Margarie, played with complete abandon by Angela Morris. Margarie is a bit unhinged, and becomes progressively more so as the action progresses. Embodying white guilt (“Sorry!” she says in recompense  for slavery), Margarie is redolent of a real life character, Rachel Dolezal, who rose to prominence two years ago when she was outed as actually white, despite posing as an African-American woman in her role as an as a regional NAACP director and an Africana studies director.

With this stew, the Hang Man provides rich terrain for farce, and we get a lot of that. But as the mayhem escalates, something unravels, and playwright seems to be struggling to tie up the strands. We eventually get to the curtain, but a gun is discharged multiple times. And I couldn’t help thinking of comedic writer Michael O’Donohue’s advice to authors struggling with an ending: "Observe how easily I resolve this problem: Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck." 

The string of scenes forms a cohesive, if loosely knit, plot, and a lot of worthy ground is covered in the skit-like parodies. But at a certain point, I found myself hoping it would end soon, and not sure where what could or should have made that happen. 

Nonetheless, serious followers of the theater will want to see this provocative work. Hang Man runs through April 29 at The Gift Theatre.