When your modestly known home town figures in the title of a play showing in the Big City, you’re obliged to attend. “A Bright New Boise,” now at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre delivers provocative challenges through superb acting, symbol-rich staging and expert direction. On the one hand, we Idahodeans (my daughter’s term for me) are on a roll. Once sniffed at as an anonymous, forgettable backwater where Hemingway retreated to shoot himself, the Boise State football team ranks ahead of traditional college superpowers, native Bruce Reed designed President Clinton’s successful economic policy, and America’s financial titans routinely play trading cards with giant corporations on Sun Valley’s golf courses. Don’t forget the adorable comedy Napolean Dynamite.

On the other hand, the Boise Chamber of Commerce isn’t likely to run a looping video of “A Bright New Boise” in the city’s visitor center. That’s because Idaho-native playwright Sam Hunter takes us to the bleak edge of Anytown where death through religious rapture constitutes an appealing escape. Apparently, we Boiseans aren’t all happy hayseeds oblivious to the punishing meaninglessness of life. This apocalyptic option emerges from the barren break room and brutally lit parking lot of a big box store in the noisy crotch of a interstate highway interchange. For a plot with essentially no events—a clerk is hired and conflict with co-workers ensue—Hunter packs an entire curriculum of economics, psychology, and theology. Hunter grips us through surprising revelation of mounting desperation, buttressed by subtle symbol, nuance and double meaning. The “bright new Boise” may mean a new beginning or the nuclear flash of world’s end.

We’re in a big box store, but these characters don’t fit easily into boxes. Boise newcomer Will secures a minimum wage job at the Hobby Lobby (store 472 in the chain), managed by the humorously profane Pauline. An anti-Wal-Mart polemic? No. Will meets high school-aged co-worker Alex who is so wired to his Ipod he hardly shakes hands. A Boise-based rendition of “The Office?” No: When Pauline leaves, the middle-aged Will announces to Alex that he’s his biological father. A soap opera? No. The next morning, punk-haired coworker Leroy uncovers that Will fled a cult church under investigation because the pastor killed a wayward parishioner. Jonestown bashing? No again. Playwright Hunter defends the self-tortured perspective of the still devout Will. Playwright Hunter knows whereof he speaks; he attended a religious high school in north Idaho.

It’s perhaps both a strength and a weakness that the play ill equips anyone with a clear view on the big issues Hunter splays on stage. Consider an easy target: At the climax, with all hell breaking lose (literally), store manager Pauline claims that business grounds all there is in Boise and America. What matters is the bottom line. We may laugh, but the others offer little else than grief-dripping ambiguity.

Director John Vreeke deploys an expert cast that honors the rich shading Hunter invests in each character. EmiilyTownley enlivens the part of store manager Pauline, at once defying that she’s a pawn of “corporate” but simultaneously noses to the grindstone of improving margins. Kimberly Gilbert plays an endearing bookworm Anna not only for comic relief (“You write books?! I read books!” ) but eventually wrenching pathos. Filipe Cabezas makes for the best two minutes of dark comedy as punk artist-cum-clerk when he explains his goal of challenging Boise’s mindless shoppers with the extremes of their lives. (He wears a t-shirt, for example, with the F word.) Joshua Morgan as Will’s unbalanced son Alex explodes his inner demons with wrenching realism. And Michael Russotto as Will commands respect from those otherwise skeptical of such extraordinary concepts as the rapture, where death delivers peace. (The cast fails on the Idaho accent. While they correctly pronounce Boise “boy cee” as opposed to “boy zee,” they don’t attempt much else. A few tips: “pen” is pronounced “pin.” No “g” at the end of present participles. North Idaho-born celebrity Sarah Palin, by the way, does not have a proper Idaho accent.)

Set designer Misha Kachman takes us with sparse economy from the banality of a chain store break room to the edge of the abyss within 25 feet of stage. He and Hunter even add Big Brother, in the form of televised talking heads from “corporate” who ramble on with skillful senselessness about high school teachers needing art supplies, or the slight architectural changes in a new Georgia store.

There may be less sniffing at things Idahodean these days. “A Bright New Boise” may even take your breath away altogether. “A Bright New Boise” plays through Nov. 6.