WASHINGTON — It isn’t enough to say that Robert O’Hara addresses the politics of gender, race, religion and sexuality all in one heart-wrenching evening of painfully awake theater. And it isn’t enough to say O’Hara weaves in and out of time and space, from the glittery opening of “Gone with the Wind” on a sparkling night in 1939 Atlanta to the library of a detention camp in Nazi Berlin, to explain his jigsaw puzzle of a plot.

No, it’s best to leave it all up to the experience of O’Hara’s latest script, “Antebellum,” a dark, twisting, belching ogre of a play that rivals even the best and brightest Shakespeare.