Don’t try to grip Baron Samedi too tightly (through May 11 at On The Boards); close inspection will squeeze the pleasure out of it, and there’s a lot of pleasure here. The late Allain Buffard’s dance-theatre song cycle also features torture, enslavement, rape, child soldiers, and all the other social weapons of despotism and fanatical insurrection.

The music is mostly Kurt Weill, which does not cleave seamlessly to this world but complements it. Such environments breed the louche, distanced tone of Weill’s music and the characters of his songs. When vulnerability is fatal then cool remove and hostile seduction define the survivors from the fodder. Buffard’s choreography rarely takes enough focus in this work to speak in its own voice alone but rather reveals itself as integral to the language and physicality of this society.

Our set appears to be a giant sheet of paper, curled up at two corners and scrolling down from a platform to the orchestra floor. An upright electric bass, a keyboard, and a guitar with a deck of pedals live just off stage left. Out of the darkness we hear a voice—a hell of a voice—singing to an open, often discordant guitar melody, heavy on the contour, making a smooth, round, jazz ballad sound. As “Trouble Man” takes shape the guitar comes in from the hinterlands and connects more directly with the voice and light catches the singer.

Those eccentric orchestrations (by Sarah Murcia along with much of the playing) are the norm here often relying on either a driving bass (slapped, plucked, or growlingly bowed) or a wandering guitar (Seb Martel), sometimes an arch organ. Actor/Dancer/Singers support with slapping and snapping percussion.

Through all this we see and hear stories of disassociation by race, conflict, the criminalization of prostitutes, and more. We see the struggles of the dispossessed, mostly in broad, universal stories, occasionally with devastating specificity, often emotionally represented through dance.

These stories touch mostly on nations of European colonization in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Zulu and Portuguese join German, French, and English, often in simultaneous murmured echoes. Here we are a planet unified in our dysfunctional response to colonialism.

The dances play, sliding down the curve of the paper from platform to orchestra. They struggle through asphyxiating tension. They play the roles of asymmetrical power structures: feeble tyrants who draw attention that totters between obeisance and the covetous salivation of hyenas circling the ailing. Dancers sing, singers dance, musicians act. There is a democratic feeling about the show.

Costumes, by Buffard with Nadia Lauro, share the general tone of decrepit decadence. A top hat embodies formal power, but a kilt has power too. Suits make uniforms for the anonymous as much as the iconoclastic. Hoods blind the wearer while hiding her from others’ gaze.

The overall effect is one of a cabaret presentation of the international headlines, less in narrative detail than emotional specificity. The texts of the songs–including a surprise bookend from Billie Holiday–have metaphoric relationships with the circumstances of the vignettes. These might be songs these characters would sing to speak their souls instead of writing the words themselves.

It all plays with such knowing style that the show avoids becoming depressive. It disturbs just enough to unsettle without provoking action. It gives us a way to see the world we know lies out there and to cope with it from a safe distance.

{Baron Samedi runs through May 11 at On the Boards, tickets and more info can be found here.}