"The Wheel" is best experienced blank. Martha Lavey, the Artistic Director of Steppenwolf which is staging the American premier of the imaginative play, begins her well-penned program note with a Spoiler Alert. "Part of the wonder and mystery of The Wheel" she writes, "is in the unpredictable way the story unfolds." That epic story begins in a peaceful village in Northern Spain, where Beatriz (the talented and majestic Joan Allen) is preparing for her younger sister's wedding. Suddenly, soldiers appear and Beatriz is unwillingly thrown into a quest to reunite a young girl (Emma Gordon) with her father. That mission is the central thrust of "The Wheel," a symbol-and allegory-laden tale of wavering and enduring compassion in the face of tragedy.

In the two-hour play, Beatriz and the silent girl travel through war zones witnessing a panorama of war and bloodshed. Zinnie Harris's rich and layered script lives in the world of magical realism, as the characters pass through time and space without comment, and fantastical powers are a subject of distrust. This fantastical element serves as both a theatrical device, and a sort of balm to the wounds of war – we witness the carnage, but are ever aware these are actors performing in a magical space. Tina Landau's Brechtian staging contributes to this, giving the audience a front-row experience of the tense, visceral, and often irrational world of war.

Blythe R.D. Quinlan's scenic design is powerful playground for the story to shift from agricultural and wooden to industrial and metallic. Her black pipes and scaffolding, hidden by shards of stretched cloth, appear like spears while also contributing to a Brechtian "backstage" aesthetic. Director Tina Landau's often breath-taking staging shines brightest during scene changes, as the story is thrust forward like soldiers storming a battlefield.

The 17-person ensemble fills the epic stage and transports the action, from Spain to France to Germany to Vietnam. As the ensemble members don varied costumes and characters, the similarities between cultures are realized: we are similar – not in an overly sentimental way, but in a visceral, blood-filled way. We have the same capacity for compassion, just as we have the same capacity to harm and destroy one another. And as we spin between evil and good, Harris seems to suggest the human spirit can triumph – but it is work.

"The Wheel" ends where it begins, just as this review will end with the playbill:

In a printed dialogue between Martha Lavey and Tina Landau, Martha asks:

Martha Lavey: Tina, will you speak to how you hope to make this play available to an audience, so that they will take away something this is nourishment for them, and not just a portrayal of the difficulty of life?

Tina Landau… I want to bring out as much light as we can find in it…the lower the play dives the more it also needs to soar.

Be transported to the world of "The Wheel" at Steppenwolf Theatre through November 10, 2013. More information and tickets at steppenwolf.org