In Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s most recent iteration of “Pass Over,” two “brothers” Moses (Jon Michael Hill) and Kitch (Namir Smallwood) engage in an interminable exchange of escapist fantasy-dialogue in which they ask one another, “What kind of plans you got?” Moses’ His Promised Land Top 10 list includes “reaching his full potential,” “getting his ass off this block,” “a penthouse suite,” and “collard greens and pinto beans.” It is immediately apparent that the pair have had versions of this conversation – if not this exact same conversation – often, perhaps since the beginning of time.

Several dynamics/occurrences disrupt the wish-list wonderment of the pair of Black friends. An eerie “rumble,” followed by both men checking to see if they have been shot, interrupts their humor-filled patter about potentially going somewhere off the nameless, nondescript urban block that has become their prison and their “day in court.” The provenance of the “gun-shots” is not the “black-on-black violence” alluded to later in the play; rather, the rumbling represents the daily barrage of bullets fired by the po-pos that remind Moses and Kitch how difficult it will be to escape the pandemic of police brutality in their concrete block.

Perhaps as dangerous as the prospect of being murdered by the police, is the unexpected visit from the buffoonish white man dressed in white (Gabriel Ebert) and, like Little Red Riding Hood, is carrying a basket of food meant for his mother. Claiming to have gotten lost, the white man wanders into Moses’ and Kitch’s space. His buffoonery quickly morphs into the more disturbing persona of Master, the white man’s name. Though he never thought of it before, his nagging presence becomes a trope for America’s pervasive whiteness, systemic racism, and the empty promises of acceptance and prosperity for the Black community.

Just like Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Moses and Kitch are trapped in an unending exercise of futility, a “mega-four” of sorts according to Moses, who is spot on: “Pass Over” is an extended metaphor, perhaps an anti-epic in which there are no heroes, no successful journeys, no victories over foes, no long-anticipated reunions, only an anti-hero exercise in futility.

Passing over to any semblance of a promised land is unlikely for the pair, and the likelihood of passing over into freedom post ante-bellum plantation slavery nonexistent. Even the few things extracted from the white majority (“Master”) are taken away. Witness the reintroduction of Jim Crow type legislation, and the attempt to restrict the access to voting aimed at Black Americans and other people of color – all of this symbolized by po-po Ossifer (Gabriel Ebert) stealing the apple pie Kitch managed to keep from Master’s food basket. Whiteness invades communities of color not to truly deliver tools of emancipation, but rather to further enslave, to control, and to exploit Black Americans. “All [humans] are created equal, but some are more equal than others” (“Animal Farm”) is clearly here an understatement.

Under Danya Taymor’s careful direction, Mr. Hill (Moses) and Mr. Smallwood (Kitch) deftly portray the prototypes and archetypes of Black Americans struggling to preserve, rehearse, and share their stories as they yearn for the space they require to achieve true equality. The eternal pain of their characters is evident in every moment (Bill Irwin, movement consultant), every intonation, every gesture. Mr. Ebert (Mister/Ossifer) is the perfect angel of death, amorphous, indiscriminate whose Ossifer barks “Who are you,” “Where you going,” “Know your place,” You’re stupid, lazy, violent.” And Mr. Ebert’s Master makes it clear to Moses and Kitch that everything is his, and nothing is theirs – not even their language, not even their bodies.

Wilson Chin’s expansive set accentuates the breadth and depth of the characters’ pain as they explore its limits, which are their confines as well. Marcus Doshi’s lighting is focused when it needs to be, moody when required, and eerily translucent as actors are ushered on an off the main playing area – actors “dissolve” upon taking their exits in the grandeur of effluence.

“Pass Over” is mega-realism, neither fiction nor fantasy, but something terribly real. Moses is unable to fulfill his destiny to lead a people from captivity (slavery) to freedom in a promised land. The white majority symbolized by Master is unable to comprehend how its pervasive whiteness has negatively impacted the Black community in America for almost a quarter of a century.

Moses’ and Kitch’s anxiety eventually transform into anger, then despair, then contemplation of suicide. The wonder just how long “they can take it.” It is here that playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu begins the new ending to “Pass Over.” There is both the hope that in a “New Eden” Moses will find actualization and be able to transcend race. In this “New Eden,” Ossifer and Master might understand that one reaps what one sows and that in order to move forward, they “gotta leave all that behind.” The play’s earlier absurdism is transformed into wonderful surrealism and magical realism.

“Pass Over is less a celebration of Broadway’s re-opening, and more a haunting awareness of the unwillingness of America’s pervasive whiteness to take responsibility for ensuring, certainly not continuing to inhibit, Black America’s sustained journey to self-determination, actualization, and authentic freedom.