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Veteran activist Vera (Vana O'Brien) talks to her granddaughter Emma (Jennifer Rowe) in "After the Revolution" playing at Portland Playhouse through June 1, 2014.

(Brud Giles)

Families fight. Feelings fester. Rifts grow.

But in the Joseph family, a loving clan of left-wing activists, the rift is no kitchen-table spat, but a revelation that divides three generations.

In Amy Herzog's well-received 2010 play, "After the Revolution," Emma has just graduated from law school in New York and runs a fund in the name of her grandfather, Joe Joseph, to combat social injustice. Herzog based Joe on her actual grandfather, a communist forced to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and a man who occupies a near-mythical place in her family for his honorable suffering. The real Joseph aroused suspicions while working for the United Nations in 1949, lost his job and, after testifying in 1953, continued to be unemployed and blacklisted.

But "After the Revolution," which Portland Playhouse presents Friday, May 2, through June 1, pivots away from a friendly gabfest when Emma discovers her late grandfather may not have been as honorable as the family believed. She is devastated and angry, unsure how to continue her activism.

Politics is a religion in the family. Emma aligns with Marxism. Her firebrand dad, a high school history teacher, spouts his radical beliefs at PTA meetings. And her grandmother, Vera, is based on the playwright's own activist grandmother, who, at 94, showed up in a New York Times photo during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2012.

"It's a play about disappointment and growing up for Emma," says director Tamara Fisch, who had a hand in developing the play with Herzog at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. "She's loyal to her grandfather. But this revelation changes her relationship with the family."

Charles Isherwood in his review for The New York Times, called the play "smart, engrossing", and wrote: it "...strikes a fresh note in being set among a family of exotic beings..." Herzog is a 2013 Pulitzer prize finalist for her play "4000 Miles."

"After the Revolution" tackles big topics such as honor and morality and "how to be an activist with integrity," Fisch says, "but it operates on a personal, family level. Everybody's disappointed in their family. The play starts out with a narrow point of view and the revelations change them."

The cast includes Vana O'Brien as the grandmother Vera, Jen Rowe as Emma and Duffy Epstein as her father, Ben.

When: Friday, May 2-June 1

Where: 602 N.E. Prescott St.

Tickets: $15-$36, 503-488-5822; portlandplayhouse.org