When I see a play for the first time, I usually try not to read the program beforehand. The reasoning behind this counter-intuitive decision is that if I have to read the program to understand what’s going on, the play isn’t doing everything it should.

Such is the case with the Chicago premiere of Charles Smith’s “The Reclamation of Madison Hemings” directed by Chuck Smith (no relation) at the handsome new location of American Blues Theater. Originally commissioned by Goodman Theatre during the pandemic specifically to write a two-character play that premiered at Indiana Repertory Theatre in 2022, the playwright throws us into the middle of a complicated story without clearly filling in the framework.

We don’t even know when the action takes place without referring to the program, and the location only emerges slowly through the conversation, even though it is crucial. The story unfolds at Monticello, Virginia, the plantation of the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, during five days in mid-November of 1866.

The Civil War has ended, and Madison Hemings (Jon Hudson Idom) and Israel Gillette Jefferson (Manny Buckley) have come from Ohio, where they live near each other, to look for Israel’s long-lost brother, Moses. Both had been among the 600 enslaved people on Jefferson’s plantation, but their treatment and paths had diverged, and their feelings about the past are very different.

While their discussions and arguments reveal parts of the backstory, the very useful program and study guide go into greater detail in a more coherent fashion including the men’s family trees and relationships to each other. As one of Jefferson’s children with enslaved woman Sally Hemings, Madison enjoyed lighter duties as a child and was freed upon Jefferson’s death in 1826, but he deeply resents his father for failing to acknowledge him and for the hypocrisy of professing the equality of all men in public while remaining a slave holder. As such, Madison has taken his mother’s last name.

Israel, who had been born at Monticello after his family was inherited, and had many jobs including footman, doesn’t harbor the same hatred, even though when Jefferson died, he and his family were all sold off to different people and didn’t see each other again. He bought his freedom from his new owner in 1844 (for $500, which had been his purchase price) and took the last name Jefferson, though he admits that was at the suggestion of a court clerk.

Both men were interviewed for memoirs that appeared in the Ohio “Pike County Republican” in 1873. I don’t know how much playwright Smith is relying on those and other sources, but his Madison has an agenda that becomes the play’s main source of conflict. Angry at having his birthright stolen, he sees Monticello as rightfully his, so he decides to take as much as he can home with him, starting with the front doors he helped build but was never allowed to walk through as a slave. He can do this because no caretaker seems to be around the rundown villa, but he overloads the wagon that brought him and Israel there, so an axle breaks.

In addition to the plot being somewhat contrived and the dialogue becoming repetitive, the playwright, as he explains in a program note, incorporates a device taken from various memorials. He has Madison and Israel list the names of many of the other enslaved people who lived and died at Monticello as a way to “humanize individuals” and “keep past events present and vital.”

This also creates some confusion. Earlier, Israel says that if he ever starts seeing Moses and others from the past, he’ll know that he’s dead. But at this point, both he and Madison say they can see the people whose names they are reciting.

So, I started thinking the characters are supposed to be dead like in, say, Sartre’s “No Exit” or even “Waiting for Godot.” The striking set by Jonathan Berg-Einhorn has a slightly surreal quality, even if Lily Walls’ admirably detailed costumes look very much of the period.

But, no, that’s not the case. Madison Hemings died in 1877 and Israel Gillette Jefferson died in 1879, long after “The Reclamation of Madison Hemings” takes place. I’m still not sure what he’s being reclaimed from, either, but the high quality of the acting makes the production worth seeing.