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If it can be argued that a result of entertainment is to desensitize — to violence, to suffering, to war — then the answer just might be the Arden Theatre Company’s production of The Whipping Man.

As its ominous name foreshadows, The Whipping Man wastes no time in shocking audiences into an almost uncomfortably close confrontation with history, stripped of the romanticizing influences of temporal distance and dramatic buildup.

Held together by three central characters, Caleb DeLeon, a Jewish Confederate soldier, and former slaves Simon and John, the play is as raw as the screams of a wounded soldier, as intuitive as his whiskey cure.

It all unfolds in the skeletal remains of a Civil War-era mansion, which seems more like a soft-focus, grayscale snapshot lovingly preserved from time’s fading fingers. Like the mansion’s inaccessible second floor, eternally just-out-of-reach of a sweeping staircase that leads to nowhere, the play too sweeps through a whirlwind of backstories and national turmoil hidden just offstage.

Of course, what happens onstage is more than enough. Horrific, heartbreaking, at times even humorous, Matthew Lopez’s play does not modernize or rework the past. It does something far better — by making it live.

Tickets are available online.

Arden Theatre Company’s The Whipping Man
When: Now-December 18
Where: 40 N. Second Street
Cost: Tickets range from $29-45
More info: www.ardentheatre.org