Two years ago, I fell in love with Samuel Hunter’s gorgeous, heartbreaking play, A Case for the Existence of God. It was then in the last weeks of its premiere production at New York’s Signature Theatre, where it had garnered appropriately rave reviews. Surely a Broadway transfer would be the next step?… or so I thought.

It was not to be. Or at least, it hasn’t happened yet. To be fair, the intimacy of the piece—not to mention it’s often emotionally shattering story—would be a commercial risk. Whatever the reasons, it proves to be lucky break for Philadelphia. Theatre Exile is now offering A Case for the Existence of God, in even more appropriately intimate circumstances. Better still, it’s been given a superlative production, directed here by Matt Pfeiffer, and featuring deeply moving performances by Keith Conallen and Isaiah Caleb Stanley.

I’ll provide a short summary, but I don’t want to give away too much, since A Case will hook you from the start. In a small town in Iowa, two men meet in an office where one, Ryan (Conallen) is seeking the help of Keith (Stanley) in obtaining a mortgage. Initially, they seem marked by their differences. Ryan is straight, white, and working class. Keith is gay, Black, and college-educated (a degree in Early Music, no less). Yet a friendship blooms, largely defined by the two men’s shared desire for a permanent sense of fatherhood. For Ryan, that means custody of his daughter by his soon-to-be ex-wife. For Keith, it’s embarking on the even thornier path of adoption.

Many audiences will see A Case first and foremost as an adoption play, and that’s certainly apt. For me, though, it’s primarily a study in exquisitely small-scale portraiture. Hunter’s focus—here and in a number of other plays—is a kind of live in middle America that is simultaneously mainstream and invisible. Small towns with struggling citizens—this is a world that he portrays with compassion, humor, and unflinching insight. For me, Hunter brings to contemporary play-writing some of what I see in the Depression-era photography of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange: through their artistry, subjects who might otherwise be forgotten are given presence and stature, even ennobled.

What Hunter manages here to pack into 90 minutes is astonishing, and final five minutes of A Case is one of the great theatrical masterstrokes I’ve ever seen. They and the entire play are delivered superbly by Stanley, whose comic charm moves unerringly into something more unmoored; and Conallen, who is practically giving a masterclass in acting, with every moment fully realized and almost painfully legible.

We are now two plays into Theatre Exile’s current season, and the company feels exhilarated and energized. A Case, which runs through January 21^st, follows their sensational production of Camp Siegfried; next up is Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries. Individually, these are three of the most provocative and powerful American plays in recent years; cannily presented together, they are a series of intimate windows into complex lives and situations. Theatre Exile is certainly the Philadelphia company to do them justice.