For a play that tackles deep-grained racial intolerance, college politics, and the limitations of political correctness, Spinning Into Butter is a surprising gagfest. Whether the comedy is gently derived from mixed meanings or laid on thick with one-liners, this 1999 Roger L. Stevens Award-winner from zeitgeist-crunching playwright Rebecca Gilman keeps its controversial points palatable with a strong sense of humor.

Much of the fun comes at the expense of the liberal arts faculty of Belmont College, Vermont and their scholarly-intellectual bullshit; an easy target for the playwright, but a satisfying one for the audience. And who better to direct a play that explores the ivory tower mentality of college staff than Franklin Ashley, a playwright professor at the College of Charleston?

Ashley maintains a balance between discursive drama and engaging character conflict, binding them with a strong theme of verbal camouflage and resulting miscommunication. From the outset, when Dean of Students Sarah Daniels wangles a scholarship for Nuyorican (ie. New York Puerto Rican) sophomore Patrick Chibas, their vibes and views are askew. To make matters worse, a series of racist notes appears on an African-American student’s door. The faculty attempts to open a dialogue with the predominantly white student body through racial-awareness forums, resulting in a boycott by students of color and scorn for Dean Burton Strauss.

The play’s set in Sarah Daniels’ office, and she is a charismatic vessel for the playwright’s thoughts and feelings. From the very first scene, Daniels has crises to deal with — she’s dumped by Ross Collins, an art history professor, and more threatening notes appear, escalating the racial situation. Daniels tries to find different ways to deal with her personal conflicts as well as the bigger issues, and talking about them seems to be the ultimate answer.

Daniels confides in Collins, even though he doesn’t understand everything she says when he bears the brunt of a candid second-act monologue. Despite her intensive studies of diverse cultures and African-American literature, Daniels is a racist; maybe more so because she’s studied and objectified people of color. If she tries to help them, then she’s being discriminatory, assuming they need help, thereby belittling them in the process. As her head spins with these slippery problems, things get worse on campus and the notes turn out to be messages from an unexpected source.

The playwright admits that Daniels’ monologue is a climactic point in the play, and when it was originally performed in New York she tightened up the scenes that follow it. There’s still a sense that the loose ends could be tied up more rapidly in an overlong show; at a butt-numbing two and a quarter hours, the PURE version drags in a few places. It’s one of those plays where a character is about to leave the stage, then changes his mind, sits down and starts talking again when the audience would prefer him not to. There’s so much rich material to explore here that any repetitious dialogue seems redundant.

Despite the occasional slow scene, the actors make the show work. Sharon Graci charms the audience in her role as Sarah Daniels, accentuating the character’s childlike qualities as per previous productions. Daniels’ youthful aspects are never more visible than when she hides behind her desk or sits on the edge of it, her feet not reaching the floor. She looks for all the world like a naïve tot on a living room couch, trying to make sense of a race riot on CNN. As her confidant, Patrick Sharbaugh gives Ross Collins a likeable quality despite the professor’s furtive relationship with passive-aggressive Petra, a dance teacher (disclosure: Sharbaugh is the City Paper’s A&E editor). Collins is stuck with a few glib lines but Sharbaugh keeps them believable.

The audience loves Dean Strauss as played by Hal Truesdale. The actor takes a scene or two to make the role click — or maybe it takes time to get used to the eccentric character, frightfully mannered in contrast to his realistic peers — but by the end of the play, he’s so amusing that the mere mention of his name raises a chuckle. Eric Christian Doucette successfully fleshes out his part as Patrick Chibas, a character dismissed as reactionary in some past versions of the play. Libby Campbell-Turner is perfect as Dean Katherine Kenney, although some wonderful facial expressions are missed by half the audience when she turns her back to them. This is an ongoing problem as the audience is rapped around the stage in an intimate layout.

Beneath all the hip cynicism and forthrightness, Gilman’s play takes too long to say too little, raising tough questions and providing weak answers. Although Gilman aims her anti-PC barbs with deadly accuracy, she doesn’t dig deep enough to make this play great. Even so, the PURE gang do their best with the text, making those barbs stick and creating a thought-provoking, polished production. (Due to the conflict of interest, Patrick Sharbaugh recused himself from editing this review. — Ed.)