No one loves school more than teachers. Sure, they may complain about unruly kids and lack of parental engagement and out-of-touch administrators and insufficient contracts, but these souls have made it their lives’ work to stay in school. Because they belong there. Because it’s part of their very being. So when a school is threatened with closure, it cuts deep to their cores.

These are the people we meet in Ike Holter’s Exit Strategy, presented by Road Less Traveled Productions, and what a grand way for Scott Behrend to return to his director duties. It’s a powerful (and sometimes hilarious) script with extraordinary roles for some of our region’s finest actors.

Collin Ranney’ s set design pulls you in first: it’s everyone’s rather dour public high school, from the façade (which looks a lot like my grammar school, P.S. 72, now known as Lorraine Academy) to the classroom, administrator’s office, and faculty room. You can almost smell the musty, chalky, slightly stale air. The opening montage is a visual and aural assault that perfects sets up the first scene: kudos to sound/projection designer Katie Menke and lighting designer John Rickus for pulling us into the story before a line of dialogue is spoken. And oh my, the opening….vice principal Ricky (Sean Ryan) is meeting with faculty members to inform them of the school’s inevitable closure, and he saves 23-year-veteran English teacher Pam for last. Pam (Diane DiBernardo) is prepared for this conversation. She knows all too well about the low graduation rate and dilapidated physical condition of Chicago’s Tumbledn High (where “even the paint is trying to run away”), but she’s more concerned that his efforts aren’t good enough and he’s not good enough to turn it around for the students and faculty who deserve more.

In subsequent scenes, we meet her colleagues, Arnold (David Mitchell) whose seniority and sensibilities rival Pam’s, Luce (Alex Garcia) with a life beyond the building, Sadie (Gabriella Jean McKinley) who understands her students’ poverty all too well, and Jania (Lissette DeJesus-Wrafter) who also has seen more than her share of student hardship.  They all deliver fierce monologues about what this school means to them. When Ricky begins to rally them – with the help of firebrand student Donnie (Steven Maiseke) –  their passions flame. Yes, I would have been Donnie back in the day if my school was threatened, too. Mitchell is masterful as the wizened – and saddened – teacher who knows what is coming.

Every performance is stellar: it’s Ricky’s turnaround and Pam’s resignation that capture the heart of Holter’s story and Ryan and DiBernardo are extraordinary interpreters. Head’s up: Holter drops a lot of f-bombs, as he did in The Light Fantastic. It’s part of the dialogue (but did Mr Pulisi, Mr Cummins, Miss Greatwood and Ms Spatola use such words in my ’70s high school days? OK, probably) and, well, you heard worse in the lunch room.

The fantastic and bombastic opening effects set you up, the subtle and poignant closing stage magic create the lasting mood. Against the effects, these actors show the truths of their characters without words.

Exit Strategy runs under two hours with no intermission, until March 22. Find details and tickets at roadlesstraveledproductions.org. And long live the building and the people who make South Park High School and Lorrain Academy, my alma maters, so special.