If you crave relief from election year finger-pointing, just head to Arena Stage, buy a ticket for “One Night with Janis Joplin,” and you’ll be transported back to a time when a young woman named Janis Joplin transfixed the world with her ability to take old and new songs and transform them with her magnificent voice, so that they became something totally different. They became hers.

This is possible at Arena for one reason only: Mary Bridget Davies, who plays Janis. With a voice that goes from blaring loud to whisper soft in a nano-second, Davies is an extraordinarily accomplished musician, capable of delivering soul, blues and rock ‘n’ roll with all the energy, noise, gentleness, pizzazz and nitty-gritty charm that Janis did. All the nasal whine is there, as is the sweet caress. All the repetitions of “baby” and “c’mon” are there, all the impossible arpeggios, all the toughness, the dancing, the vulnerability.