By the end of the first scene in Matthew Lopez's taut, 90-minute play The Whipping Man, a Confederate soldier is getting his gangrenous lower leg amputated by two of his family's former slaves.

Powerful? Absolutely. But that horrifying scene is just one of the myriad dramatic thrills crafted into Lopez's engrossing, accomplished first play.

Clive Cholerton, the new artistic director at Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company, kicked off his tenure recently with the sizzling world premiere of Vices: A Love Story. His gripping new production of The Whipping Man further demonstrates that under Cholerton, the Caldwell is becoming a different theater -- and so far, an exciting one.

The Whipping Man is an intricately calibrated study of three men whose lives have been altered by the war that threatened to tear apart the United States.

Caleb DeLeon (Nick Duckart) is the rebel soldier who has agonizingly made his way back home to his family's gutted mansion in Richmond. Simon (John Archie) is an older former slave making plans for his new life of freedom with his wife and daughter. John (Brandon Morris) is an ex-slave around Caleb's age, a man with visions of heading north and no reservations about looting the homes of the DeLeons' friends.

The play takes place over three April days in 1865, just after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. But these aren't just any random days. The DeLeons are a Jewish family whose slaves embraced the religion. And April 15, 1865, happens to be the first night of Passover, the night celebrating liberation from slavery in Egypt.

Though the younger men are reluctant, Simon insists on having a seder. The parallels between ancient Egypt and Civil War-era America fuel some angry conversation.

Other plot points in Lopez's story include masters having sex with their slaves, the whipping of slaves by men whose only job was to brutally punish ``misbehavior,'' and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Though it may sound like too much to pack into such a short play, it isn't, not at all.

Cholerton directs with the surest of hands, bringing out the script's comedy (yes, there are laughs), the altered power structure within the home, the story's historic resonance. Set designer Tim Bennett delivers the stripped shell of a home, and costume designer Alberto Arroyo contributes distressed period clothes that look as though they smell bad.

After picking the play, though, Cholerton's best decisions were his casting choices. Duckart plays Caleb's unenlightened, entitled attitudes, but he blends just enough vulnerability into the character that he becomes someone richer than a villainous caricature. The charismatic Morris also straddles a line, this one between cockiness and fear. Archie, first among equals, is simply mesmerizing -- commanding, real, tender, raw.

The Whipping Man is unlike any Civil War play you've ever seen. But if you love compelling drama loaded with unexpected twists and turns, it's one you should see.

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