One part history lesson, one part local-hero narrative, and one part victory lap, Joanna McClelland Glass's Palmer Park hits home because it is home. Any success story in Detroit, even a relatively short-lived one from four decades ago, remains cause for celebration. Now, economic turmoil and vanishing industry contributes to the city's bottomed-out property values and high crime rate; back in 1968, it was civil unrest, when "integration" generally signaled not diversity, but white flight.

The Palmer Park neighborhood of Detroit was one shining exception, a middle-class neighborhood fiercely united in its dedication to maintain the integrated balance of 35% black, 65% white. (Any more residents of color, the logic went, and "white eyes" would be scared away.) In its professional US premiere at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, directed by Yolanda Fleischer, the play documents the political and human implications of a concept that succeeded until it failed.

The centerpiece of the production is the Hazeltons and the Townsends, neighbors whose spacious, gorgeous old homes are suggested with loving detail by set designer Christopher Otwell. The couples' commonalities appear to end at their daughters' ages and their dogs: obsessively careful Fletch (Jason Echols) and Linda (Casaundra Freeman) must try infinitely harder to achieve the same status as easygoing Martin (Patrick Moltane) and Kate (Inga R. Wilson). Whereas the latter dress like hippies without consequence, the former must wear suits and hats in order to be seated at a highway restaurant (great work in contrasts by costumer Mary Copenhagen). These four actors carefully enter into the uncharted territory of friendship across the racial divide, especially in the separate, self-conscious dissections of their first encounter. A later connection between Wilson and Freeman is especially touching, as one of the few moments in the play when race seems less important than plain compassion.

The play's ten actors frequently address the audience as in a lecture, narrating and analyzing the many challenges of preserving a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in the midst of blighted Detroit, with illustrative images almost constantly projected onto a screen upstage. At other times, they play out scenes that vary from jokey vignettes to grave realities. Lighting design by Curtis Green addresses these opposing tones without distracting juxtaposition, and Patrick Field's sound design infuses the pre-show and intermission atmosphere with turbulent energy from the era's pop songs by black and white artists.

From a narrative standpoint, the story's backbone is the fate of Hampton School: the parents correctly surmise that a successful Palmer Park requires a successful school, and they start a grass-roots fund to provide needed supplies. Here is where outside issues beyond race enter the fray as surrounding neighborhoods cry foul; their lower-income populations are mostly two-income households, with no time to raise funds nor money to give. The cast is strong across the board in its character work and matter-of-fact handling of touchy subject matter. In addition to her primary role as a Palmer Park mother, Toni Walker-White stands out as the gravelly understated school principal plodding through numerous administrative proceedings.

As reflected in this review, race is at the forefront of Palmer Park, always in the characters' thoughts and actions. Intriguingly, for all the trumpeting about unprecedented accomplishment, the show also introduced kernels of doubt for this viewer. With the exception of a quick scene of pure joy describing the '68 World Series, every gathering of these friends involves them talking point blank about race, addressing the circumstances that facilitated their friendship in the most clinical-sounding terms. Talk of effort and sacrifice challenges the viewer to contemplate the steep price of being emblematic and revolutionary, of allowing the pursuit to overtake one's identity. What happens when the experiment ultimately comes apart is a well-earned, intriguing payoff; the venture may have succeeded in isolation, but outside pressures and the decline of Detroit as a whole proved too much for the community to bear. In all, the production's dual information- and character-based approaches deliver plenty to respond to intellectually and emotionally.