So, before everyone starts running for the aisles, take a deep breath and step back to assess the situation. (OK, well, not everyone. Conservatives, compassionate or otherwise, may excuse themselves from the room, but then again, they're probably not on left-lunging InterAct's mailing list anyway.)

This being InterAct's 20th-anniversary season, artistic director Rozin has been paying special attention to some of his past successes, among them a triple Barrymore-winning production of Israel Horovitz's fast-paced Lebensraum. Black Gold's script takes its zigzagging structure directly from Horovitz, with about 100 characters - played by an ensemble of six - who pop up and disappear like targets in a shooting gallery. Some make it all the way through the play unscathed, some don't.

Sometimes they pop up only once, halfway across the globe. Other times they provide a narrative that eventually pulls all the script's disparate pieces together. And you know what? Rozin, who also directed, does a pretty darn good job of keeping the pace moving and the wheels turning, lubricated, no doubt, by all that sweet crude flowing through his - also occasionally sweet and crude - tale.

Black Gold follows the family of Curtis Walker (Craig Alan Edwards), a black working-class father in a Detroit neighborhood populated by others like himself or poorer. Walker buys an oil rig on eBay and decides to drill right in his backyard. When he taps into an oil reserve the size of Kuwait and the government gets wind of it, well, you can bet there will be blood.

The cast mostly rises to the challenge of juggling all those roles. Though Kaci M. Fannin flubbed a handful of lines on opening night, Delante G. Keys was a standout, and the rest of the cast served as steady anchors for the play's freewheeling concept. Marka Suber's cluttered set design manages to be versatile enough to house its myriad characters and settings.

The piece has some flaws, particularly a surfeit of credulity. Can we really suspend our disbelief that Walker turns down a $10 million offer for his property because a congresswoman convinces him it's the right thing to do? Or that the whole neighborhood, already bingeing on credit, will do the same? Then there is the issue of stereotype. Yes, this is satire, but there are some places a white playwright ought to tread lightly. Still, clever interludes like a "Petroholics Anonymous" meeting, which might include the only instance of oil-based erotica ever depicted onstage, happen often enough to redeem the action.

Rozin has crafted a complicated work for insane times, a new-century cautionary fable that because of its topical nature may have a short shelf life but leaves us laughing all the way to oblivion.