A play about cancer, a play about unbelievable fortitude, a play about unique family bonds — none of these in itself is rare. What is exceptional, and on full display in Detroit Repertory Theatre’s Looking for the Pony, is a production whose every component works harmoniously in service of a singular, remarkable vision.

The play’s premise is laid bare in its unusual title: sisters Lauren (Lisa Lauren Smith) and Oisie (Yana Levovna) are the kind of people who, given a mountain of horse crap, see nothing but equine promise, and they’re ever-ready to get their hands dirty in search of the prize. Here, the excrement of the fable takes the form of Lauren’s breast cancer, which emerges abruptly and is fought aggressively, with surprising mirth and no shortage of loving support. Yet it’s a credit to this show, and to director Charlotte Leisinger, that cancer hardly feels like the sole fact of the play; rather, it’s an unfortunate but reliable way of marking the passage of time in their already-full lives, be it Oisie’s graduate writing program across the country or Lauren’s full-time social work, passionate fundraising, and role as Supermom. Even when energies flag or the outlook is dire, these women have vigor and pluck to spare, and the tender, cherished relationship they share provides reason enough to keep fighting.

William Missouri Downs’s Forgiving John Lennon is designed to provoke a reaction from its audience. There’s no one desired effect, the play is too diverse and open-ended for that, but that the viewer will react — strongly — is almost certain. In its world-premiere production, the Detroit Repertory Theatre and director Harry Wetzel use twisted comedy as an entry point into a minefield of well-intentioned prejudice and misguided political correctness, blurring perceptions of acceptable and taboo.

The plot is centered around Asma (Yolanda Jack), a Muslim poet invited from Somalia to deliver readings and speeches at a few New England colleges. In the home of her eager hosts, professors Joseph and Katie (Benjamin J. Williams and Leah Smith), wide-eyed Asma’s awkwardly pointed comments (emerging from literal interpretations of English phrases and an outsider’s perfectly logical deductive reasoning) are effusively smoothed over and preemptively forgiven by this almost aggressively tolerant couple. The foreigner iteration of “kids say the darndest things” is an old device, but it works here in light of Asma’s enormous insight and Jack’s playful reactions as she politely endures Katie and Joseph’s meager hospitality and quietly enjoys pointing out their ideological inconsistencies and being smarter than they give her credit for. She isn’t Borat by a long shot (although these scenarios are certainly funny); her questions originate from fearless inquisitiveness rather than ignorance.

There are few real surprises in Romulus Linney’s stage adaptation of the Ernest J. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying, but they’re not necessary in a story that shocks and dismays simply by playing out exactly as the viewer would expect. At the play’s opening, the young Jefferson (Gabriel Johnson) is already on death row, but fear and institutionalized inequities in the Jim Crow South keep anyone from challenging the verdict; even an explicit did-he-do-it conversation in the second act feels like no more than a mournful intellectual exercise. In this world, it’s accepted as fact that a black man standing close by when a white man is murdered is as good as dead. When his own public defender uses the gangly metaphor of a hog to be slaughtered as a plea for clemency, Jefferson seizes on that one word — hog — and turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy, shutting down and merely waiting for the day he’ll be dragged to the electric chair.

His guardian, Miss Emma (Barbara Jacobs-Smith), wisely realizes the only thing Jefferson can now control is how he chooses to face his fate, and she recruits the boy’s former teacher, Grant Wiggins (Harold Hogan), to instill a manly sense of dignity in the condemned. Already struggling with his vocation at a rural plantation school and sustaining a cautious relationship with another teacher, the still-married Vivian Baptiste (Angela King), Grant thinks only of leaving the doldrums of his surroundings to accomplish better and more important things elsewhere. Nobody should be surprised that Grant needs to learn a lesson as much as Jefferson does, but the way it plays out in this Detroit Repertory Theatre production, directed by Barbara Busby, peels back futility to reveal the power of pride in the face of oppression.

Family, community, devotion, and apiculture are all given their due in playwright Elena Hartwell's A Strange Disappearance of Bees. The world-premiere production by Detroit Repertory Theatre is a strong union of script, direction, and tech, creating a safe-feeling yet emotionally vulnerable journey whose honey-drenched heart rarely skips a beat.

Hartwell's script uses bees and beekeeping as a framework as well as a loose metaphor for the events of the play. The central role of bees in the agriculture industry, the symbiotic relationship between the potentially deadly insects and their cultivators, the power of the female in community dynamics, and even the emergence of colony collapse disorder, a real-life threat to bees that lends the show its title, are discussed in monologue form by beekeeper Rud (Milfordean Luster). Time will tell how this highly topical entry point ages, but the connection between Rud's brief lectures and the organically unfolding events of the play are largely complementary. In fact, as directed by Hank Bennett, each element of the story feels integral, which is no small feat.

Chief among the problems with playwright Richard Kalinoski's new My Soldiers is that it wants to be a movie. This alone isn't unforgivable; plays can successfully emulate or borrow from film in many respects. The problem with this particular vision is that it calls for split-second transitions to flashbacks and simultaneously requires a level of visual detail that makes it impossible for the performers to execute those transitions in real time. Demanding that the main character change her clothes and appearance from a maladjusted veteran to her green-haired, pierced teenage self (and back again) is asking too much of a stage production. In practice, the Detroit Repertory Theatre professional world premiere plunged repeatedly into silent half-darkness to watch yet another fumbling, back-turned costume change. Under the direction of Hank Bennett, much of the two-and-a-half-hour play buckles under the strain of unavoidably clunky pacing.

The viewer is promised an eye-opening study of an Army medic dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, but most of the story concerns Angi (Lisa Lauren Smith) unequivocally failing to recognize, let alone deal with, her obvious PTSD. She's simply discharged and sent home, where her father (Cornell Markham) and best friend (Lulu Nicolette Dahl) act as though nothing has changed, and apparently not one person has ever considered the mental toll of war or can otherwise cogently identify that something is wrong with this suffering, insufferable individual. The audience, in contrast, is spoon-fed plentiful evidence, ranging from expository scenes of a confident pre-war Angi to mysterious flashbacks of panting in the desert to her unhealthy attachment to a stuffed camel, which, if it could speak, would bray out I am a symptom! For the entirety of the first act and part of the second, no one heeds the camel.

The success of a technology-themed play like Two Point Oh hinges on a lot of components working just right. The audio and video feeds need to precisely integrate with the action in real time. The blocking requires actors to respond to each other despite not being in the same room. And a primary character must be believable as an anthropomorphic manifestation of computer software. In this world premiere at the Detroit Repertory Theatre, there's not a whine, not a flicker, giving full attention to playwright Jeffrey Jackson's dexterous exploration of the relationship between human innovation and humanity. All this technology might sound like theater à la conference call, but the story that unfolds in this too-familiar reality, as directed by Harry Wetzel, delivers much more.

Not long after the play begins, billionaire software mogul Elliot Leeds (Monrico Ward) is dead. Much to the surprise of his wife and his business partner, Elliot has no intention to remain dead, thanks to a revolutionary computer program he developed in secret. The interactive and artificially intelligent software replicates his face, mannerisms, memories, and personality: meet Elliot, version 2.0. Ward's entire performance is logged via video feed to a giant flat-screen TV upstage, where he manages to be disarmingly human, yet unsettling — sometimes compiling exactly the right thing to say, but also nailing gorgeous glitches like buffering time as he computes and slightly inappropriate canned responses when the system misreads the situation. This stellar interpretation of what could have been just a talking head is instead the axis around which the play's many stories revolve, for as we are continually reminded, Elliot isn't real any more; the real intrigue is in the people affected by his electronic longevity.

From the first glimpse of A Song For Coretta, it's clear the production is willing to take risks. Nearly all the Detroit Repertory Theatre stage is taken up by an immense church facade (designed by Harry Wetzel), leaving the characters on the sidewalk outside with hardly more space in which to maneuver than that of an actual sidewalk. Every character on stage is relegated to the foreground, a manufactured challenge handled with commendable ease by director Barbara Busby.

Pearl Cleage's script throws five strangers together in line for the public viewing of the late Coretta Scott King. In the middle of the night, bothered by intermittent rain, these characters linger at the very end of the line, compelled only at the last moment to take part in history. Their reasons for coming are as varied as their lives and attitudes, and in the course of two acts we learn much about each character's convictions as well as the experiences that shaped them. It's not clear how much the women influence each others' perspectives, but their shared reverence of Mrs. King gives them — and the audience — plenty to consider.

Playwright Jacob M. Appel, in his program notes for Causa Mortis or The Medical Student, suggests that his plays are defined by "strong female characters." I disagree. At the Detroit Repertory Theatre's world-premiere production, what I saw was shrill female characters.

The script is undoubtedly funny; it is madcap, full of jokes. I could envision a version of this show that attempted to bring out the humor through character and relationship, although there is only one relationship of note here. In the absence of a grounded approach, as in this production's larger-than-life presentation, an ensemble needs to perfect its timing and polish every joke in order to keep the audience laughing every instant. Once again, what I saw came up short; instead, the thinly sketched, stressed-out characters barked at each other for occasional laughs.