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With all its ambiguities and the sometimes wobbly tones, this admirable production demands respect. It’s a work-in-progress worth investigating.

Julie Hébert’s family dramaTree, set in Chicago’s South Side around 2000, tells the story of a now demented African-American woman named Jessalyn Price (Sloan Robinson), who lives mostly upstairs, and is cared for by her world-wearied son, Leo (Chuma Gault).

Paul Rubenstein

June Carryl as Hecuba, surrounded by Trojan Women

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More About

• Euripides
• Julie Hebert
• Troy
• Charles Duncombe
• Theater

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If Duncombe goes overboard with political explications of his macroscopic view, Hébert commits the inverse, having Jessalyn spout oblique lyrical fragments from her withering recollections, imposed upon what’s really a microscopic view of one family, and one long-ago love affair. Through the microscope, however, you can see the larger patterns of the society that shaped their lives, and ours. It too is a portrait of warring clans and their brittle attempts at reconciliation and acceptance.

Into the household wanders a Caucasian interloper from Louisiana, named Didi (Jacquelyn Wright), bereft over the recent death of her father and determined to learn the truth of a possible affair he had with the now-demented woman upstairs. Turns out Leo and Didi may even be siblings. Uh-oh.

And so begins not only a very testy relationship between the family in Chicago, including Leo’s sweet-smart daughter JJ (nicely played by Tessa Thompson), but also gender-ambiguous, smarty-pants Didi.

Another family drama about unearthing secrets? This could be an exercise in tedium, were it played out the way it usually is, with people suddenly confessing with melodramatic flourish to past sins, for no particular reason other than to expiate their own guilt, and the playwright’s tug on the puppet strings.

Not so here. Hébert structures her play as an anthopological dig. When old and difficult truths emerge, they do so from the exigencies of empirical evidence — correspondences that finally emerge, as well as the persistence of Didi, a truth-seeker whose curiosity borders on the belligerent. That’s probably what it takes to get to the heart of anything.

Hébert is a lovely writer, who avoids propelling her drama with glib Gothic parodies, a technique bountifully employed in Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County. The friction here comes from personalities, not presumptions. The play finds its stride through people clashing, even gently, and their conflicting needs. When Jessalyn rambles on, especially near the play’s start, and despite Robinson’s meticulous and endearing performance, under Jessica Kubzansky’s direction, the forced poeticism has the texture of jam on top of honey.

THE TROJAN WOMEN | Adapted by CHARLES DUNCOMBE from the play by EURIPIDES | Presented by CITY GARAGE, 1340½ Fourth St. (alley entrance), Santa Monica | Through February 21 | (310) 319-9939

TREE by JULIE HÉBERT | Presented by ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE–L.A. at [INSIDE] THE FORD, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hlywd. | Through December 13 | (323) 461-3673, FordTheatres.org