Armando Riesco, Zabryna Guevara, and Al Rodrigo Photo by Joan Marcus

Meet our heroine, Julissa Reynoso (Zabryna Guevara, giving an amiable and whip-smart performance). She came to this country as a child from her home in the Dominican Republic, settled with her family in the Bronx, became a naturalized citizen, worked as an attorney in a prestigious law firm, and then jumped into the cloud cuckoo land of international diplomacy by joining the State Department.

Coincidentally, Julissa Reynoso is also the name of the former diplomat who co-wrote Public Charge with playwright Michael J. Chepiga. Names of many of the other characters are also drawn from real life. So are we dealing here with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Well, we are warned by on-stage signage that "the opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government." So perhaps "truthiness" will have to suffice as we enter the realm best described as a true-to-life version Mad magazine's popular comic strip: "Spy vs. Spy."

Let's start with a few facts of which we can be certain. In 2009, Alan Gross, an American government contractor employed by USAID, was in Cuba for the purpose (we are told) of providing that country's Jewish community with sophisticated communication equipment. He was arrested and charged with spying on the Cuban government. It would take a massive effort, loaded with more twists and turns than a pretzel on LSD, to set him free five years later. The effort to secure his release is the central driver for the play, and three women are at the forefront of that battle.

From the State Department, we've got Reynoso, along with her supportive senior advisor, the savvy Cheryl Mills (Marinda Anderson). From the world outside of governmental gamesmanship, we've got the touching heart of the story: Judy Gross (the excellent Deirdre Madigan at the performance I attended), wife of the imprisoned Alan Gross. Judy Gross appears at intervals during the play to press Reynoso for help and is probably the one most able to keep our protagonist's eye on the prize.

And then there's Cuba, the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, to borrow a quote from Winston Churchill in the context of the similar Soviet foreign policy. How to work with Cuba when the United States has no established means to do so and there is a five-decade unspoken mutual agreement to ignore each other that stands between them?

The situation is not dissimilar to the Cold War rivalry depicted in the musical Chess, in which, if you recall, the father of Florence Vassy has been a long-time prisoner of the Soviet Union. Much of Public Charge is focused on the process of making the impossible possible in order to bring Mr. Gross home. Here's where that Spy vs. Spy stuff comes in, playing out like an international game of Twister. It actually is fascinating stuff as it draws in a cast of characters representing the U.S., Cuba, and go-between countries of Haiti and Uruguay.

Director Doug Hughes keeps things moving along at a zippy pace across Arnulfo Maldonado's set largely consisting of a series of low bench-like platforms, while Lucy Mackinnon's video design helps guide us geographically. The rest of the cast is altogether first-rate. Notables are Dan Domingues as Reynoso's eventual ally within the State Department, a terrific Al Rodrigo as Uruguay's president José "Pepe" Mujica, and Armando Riesco at Mujica's aide-de-camp.

The world has changed considerably since the time depicted here (consider, among other things, our current official approach to dealing with Cuba). But, for one brief shining moment, there was a real marriage of politics and humanitarianism for which many of us can feel proud. That's the story Public Charge serves to remind us of.