I am in a very — very — small minority of people who didn’t love the current Broadway production of “Appropriate,” up for eight Tony Awards next month. Oh, I find Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ savage dysfunctional-family play fascinating, but the Broadway production left me with a pounding headache.

For the Ensemble Company here in Central Florida, director Ayò Jeriah Demps has shown me what I was missing in New York. Demps’ cast finds layers in these awful people, and you realize that maybe there’s a reason for their awfulness. And maybe we are all capable, under certain circumstances, of being just as awful as they are.

“Appropriate” is set at a white Southern family’s old plantation house, where generations of Lafayettes have lived. The family patriarch has died, and his three children have assembled to sell off the clutter before the homestead is auctioned off. But this is no “Brady Bunch” reunion. Oldest sibling Toni’s travails have left her bitter and on the attack. Middle child Bo is preoccupied with his economic future and youngest sibling Franz is trying to atone for his very serious past sins — possibly.

When items found in the house — nicely cluttered by scenic designer Bonnie Sprung — start to paint a picture of the family’s deceased patriarch as racist, the tenuous family ties are frayed even further.

The brilliance in Jacobs-Jenkins’ play is how it is about a family unit but also speaks to the state of the country. For this is a play about identity and memory and reconciliation — in this family, tied up with issues of race, just as it is with the nation. The characters are obsessed with their own identities, down to what names they call themselves: “That’s not me,” “I’m not that person now,” “That’s not who I want to be,” they say at different moments.

But to be the people they want, they twist their memories to fit their own narratives. How they want to cope with the ugly parts of their past mirrors the different ways Americans try to deal with the nation’s historical mistakes: Excuse them, ignore them, deflect them, and most diabolically, profit from them.

Jacobs-Jenkins also offers a stern warning as to what happens when a family — or a nation — tries to sweep things under the rug: The mess just gets handed down to the next generation, here embodied most strikingly and delightfully by Maddy Poston as motormouth teenager Cassidy — whose mother frets about exposing her to anything not considered “appropriate.”

“I’m not upset,” Poston’s Cassidy chirps, looking casually at horrifying photos of Black lynchings. “Am I supposed to be?”

In another moment, scrolling through the Internet, she blithely — and therefore chillingly — asks, “Who is Emmett Till?”

Poston nails these moments with all the clueless privilege they beg for.

Demps has assembled an all-around top-notch cast and thrillingly has found the necessary moments for them to show us glimmers of humanity, something to feel empathy with, under their generally unlikeable veneers. And the director positions the show’s actors so that the audience has a chance to consider the characters as reflected in the looks on their siblings’ and children’s faces.

As Toni, Janine Papin hurls blistering insults and wheedles as a put-upon martyr, but just watch her mesmerizing face transform from snarling to wounded in a flash. Andres Procel shrewdly keeps the audience guessing about Franz’s motivations while also projecting sincerity. Matthew MacDermid gives Bo palpable inner conflict between his desire for family and his desire for prosperity.

As Bo’s wife, Jessica Hamilton deftly provides both comic relief and piercing insight, while Shelby Mae Randle takes what could be a stock comedic role — the flower child/New Age spirit — and injects it with humanity and warmth.

Rounding out the cast are Bennet Preuss, whose mopey teen is effective but at times too sullenly soft-spoken, and young Phoenix Swonger, who delivers the play’s most gasp-inducing moment.

“This place has history. Our history,” implores Papin’s Toni as she defends the house — old, weakened, messy and cluttered by its past. In a short coda, Jacobs-Jenkins shows us the house’s future and seemingly dares us to ask: What will the country’s future be?

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Want more theater and arts news and reviews? Go to orlandosentinel.com/entertainment.

‘Appropriate’

Length: 2:50, including 2 intermissions

Where: Imagine Performing Arts Center at Oviedo Mall

When: Through May 12

Cost: $18-$22

Info: imagineperforming artscenter.org