Tommy Dorfman and Tedra Millan Photo by Matthew Murphy

Billed as "a tragedy in five acts," and indeed it's tragic, it dramatizes the subtitle of Stein's book: "My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman." Born and raised in Williamsburg's Hasidic community, Chava (Tommy Dorfman), the sixth child and first son of a distinguished rabbi, is raised to follow strictly in his footsteps. The family were direct descendants of the Baal Shem Tov, an 18th century mystic generally credited with the founding of Hasidism. Thus they were granted unchallenged status in the community, and given preassigned existences. Young Man (we never do find out Chava's given name), you are going to be a rabbi, and that's that.

We meet Chava, in costume designer Enver Chakartash's short-short skirt, as she's rendezvousing with Jonah (Brandon Uranowitz), the progressive rabbi at a makeshift Upper West Side synagogue, well rendered by Arnulfo Maldonado's shabby-genteel set. She has nervously invited her parents to, essentially, come out to them, with Jonah's helping hand. But only her father, Tati (Richard Schiff), shows up. "Better for me to know what this is all about than to drag her all the way up here," he grumbles to, as he still sees Chava, his son. All are speaking in Yiddish, and we get that quickly.

We'll meet Tati's wife, though, in delicately rendered flashbacks that go all the way back to when Chava was a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. How to portray him/her at so many phases of his/her life? With puppets, of course, beautifully realized by designer Amanda Villalobos and operated by Justin Otaki Perkins and Emma Wiseman. In the first flashback, Mami (Judy Kuhn, who, happily, gets to sing a bit, lullabies and hummed tunes) is comforting her young son, who hears that he's due to receive a haircut on his third birthday, and panics at the prospect: "I don't wanna cut my hair, I wanna be like my sisters!" (He's awfully well-spoken for a two-year-old, but let that go.) You'd expect that to be a harbinger of conflicts to come, but with this Orthodox bunch, sexual confusion just doesn't register.

Brandon Uranowitz Photo by Matthew Murphy

It sounds intense, doesn't it, and it is. But Weinstein leavens it with abundant humor, stemming mostly from the contrasts between This World in Williamsburg and That One Out There. Schiff can pull a laugh out of sheer timing, though Tati isn't an overly ingratiating character. Yet neither is he a monster. Tati is thoughtful, loving, even witty–just ill equipped to deal with any phenomenon beyond his immediate existence, and that existence doesn't go beyond the Williamsburg Bridge.

Director Tyne Rafaeli has some lovely ideas. Chief among them is having Dorfman voice the Chava puppets at various ages, often gesturing in concert with them, accentuating how disembodied Chava (Hebrew, incidentally, for "Eve") feels in a man's skin and garb. The pacing is perfect; it's just shy of two hours, and they fly by. Uranowitz is a fine Jonah, a harried young dad with conflicts of his own about traditional vs. progressive, and a special bow to Millan, who shows there's likely more to those Orthodox women you see on Bedford Avenue than they'll ever reveal–dutiful, yes, but with minds of their own. And another to lighting designer Ben Stanton, who can illuminate dozens of candles, and change the mood, at the flick of a switch.

As Chava asserts her new identity and forges into territory unknown, we applaud her initiative and independence even as we mourn what she's leaving behind. Stein is now out of touch with her father and most of her dozen siblings, and a wrenching scene has Tati warning her that her son will be off limits to her, too. There are no easy answers here, no reconciling of the two divergent paths Chava must choose between.

One theatregoer might exit Becoming Eve thinking that religion ruins everything, and another might think, no, it offers purpose, structure, a map to a higher calling. Both would be right. It's indicative of Stein's and Weinstein's skill and bountiful heart that, even as we curse Tati's intransigence, we know where he's coming from and sympathize with the agony he feels. He doesn't intrinsically hate trans people. They're just outside his experience. And for that, yes, blame the confines of tradition.