YOUNGSTOWN — Don’t let the line that most of Emma’s acting gigs have been in plays staged above pubs fool you. She is a great actor.

Her award-worthy performances for even smaller audiences include a daughter trying to convince her parents one more time that she will not betray their trust and a rehab patient repentant about her addictive behavior and determined to make a change.

Brandy Johanntges, who plays Emma in Youngstown Playhouse’s production of Duncan Macmillan’s “People, Places & Things,” is great as well. Emma is one of those characters that performers fantasize about getting the opportunity to play, and Johanntges’ commitment to and command of the character is absolute.

In the preview story for the play, director Christopher Fidram described Emma as an unreliable protagonist, and Johanntges manipulates the audience the same way Emma confounds the other characters. She keeps viewers constantly questioning what is true, what’s an intentional lie and what’s a rationalization Emma is using to convince herself of something as well as those around her.

The play opens with Emma’s addictions impairing her work in a production of Anton Chekov’s “The Seagull,” which inspires her to check herself into a rehab center, not so much to get clean but to get a certificate that says she is to assuage the fears of any future directors.

But any recovering addict and the people who help them are used to the lies and manipulations, so her initial choices don’t have much sway with the staff at the center or her fellow patients in group therapy. If Emma is going to master this role, she’s going to have to go deeper.

While Emma overwhelmingly is the dominant character, it’s not the only meaty role in Macmillan’s script.

Emma tells the center’s doctor and therapist that they remind her of her mother, and Molly Galano plays all three roles and creates distinctive but complementary personas for each one. Richard Smiley deftly shifts from bare-chested, babbling rehab patient to Emma’s man-of-few-words father

Stephen Fraley makes his officiousness endearing as a by-the-rules employee at the center. Peter Sherman stands out as the group therapy member who sees through Emma’s lies and devices, but all of the group therapy patients (played by Lisa Torrence, Eric McCrea, Trish Terlesky, Maria Ceraolo, Donovan Rubante) get their moment in Macmillan’s script.

For a show that in many ways is designed as an acting showcase, the technical flourishes are just as impressive.

There’s a bit of stage magic I won’t spoil here that is nightmare inducing. Ellen Licitra’s stunning lighting design transforms the stage from sterile rehab facility to pulsating disco in a flash. It might be the most ambitious lighting design I’ve seen in that space, and it becomes an integral part of the storytelling.

Selective audio cues, from snippets of music to more ominous sounds, help put the audience inside the mind of a detoxing addict. The set design by Johnny Pecano and Fidram uses a few white blocks and minimal set pieces to shape shift for various locales, and Fidram is able to keep the pacing brisk, even in a first act that’s about 85 minutes long.

“People, Places & Things” goes to some dark places, but Saturday’s performance also drew some laughs louder than any comedy that will be staged this season. It’s the kind of show perfectly suited to the Moyer Room, and it’s a fine start to the Playhouse’s second century of theater.