Reality takes an unrelenting toll on one family’s explosive bonds in ‘The Book

Suzan-Lori Parks’ play “The Book of Grace” is receiving its Chicago premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre 15 years after it was first staged at New York’s Public Theater. That’s an extreme gap for a playwright of Parks’ stature — she is most famous for her 2002 Pulitzer-winning “Topdog/Underdog,” considered one of the best American plays of the last 50 years — which reflects the fact that “Grace” was not generally received as one of Parks’ strongest efforts.

Upon experiencing the revival of this three-hander about a Border Patrol agent, his wife, and his son from a prior marriage who comes back after many years, I can see why the play hasn’t often been produced. Even with rewrites that add some of Parks’ own music and some shifting discoveries, it’s overlong and plenty distressing. It strains for but never quite hits simultaneously that wondrous and thrilling mix of lyricism, emotion, and big-picture meaning that Parks has demonstrated with works like “Topdog” and, more recently, “Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3).”

But it possesses all of those elements, and it’s so darn thematically rich that I’m obsessing over the play the next day, pondering what it has to say about America, which is always, always Parks’ subject. What that means exactly… well, America is a big topic, filled with the craziest contradictions.

You know another big subject that’s so simple and yet so complex? Grace.

Stop. Think. Combine it with the concept of America. Think more. OK, proceed.

Grace (Zainab Jah) is a character here, and yes, she’s secretly writing a book, thus the play’s title, filled with “evidence of good things” that helps her absorb life’s many disappointments, including the controlling nature of her husband Vet. Vet (Brian Marable) is a zealously committed Border Patrol agent about to receive a medal for his service, which he admits has moral ambiguities aplenty. Buddy (Namir Smallwood) hasn’t seen either Grace or Vet in 18 years, although he has been corresponding to tell them about his career success and exploits, none of which are true. He returns, apparently for the occasion of his father’s medal ceremony.

Staged in Steppenwolf’s in-the-round Ensemble Theater by director Steve H. Broadnax III, the production benefits greatly from extraordinary performances from all three actors. Marable puts forth a compelling charisma that makes us want to, at first, like a character who reveals his tyrannical jealousies over time. Smallwood combines Buddy’s psychological damage (he had problems even before the post-traumatic stress of war), desperation for approval, and internal fury over his father’s treatment of him and his mother, into the epitome of combustible grievance. Amid the explosive tension between the tyrant and the possibly violent revolutionary (or terrorist — doesn’t it always depend on the point of view?) — we have Jah’s beautiful embodiment of human grace as Grace, perpetually optimistic, unconditionally forgiving, possibly enabling, painfully acquiescent.

The first act belongs to Grace and has a mellow, even sweet vibe. The second, much longer act, is dark, incessantly roiling.