If “Inherit the Wind” sounds like a retread of old news, the Strawberry Theatre Workshop production should change your mind. It’s more than just a courtroom drama, more than a clash of outsized personalities, and certainly more than a “debate” between evolutionary science and Biblical creationism. Quite unlike the film of 1960 that you may dimly remember, this show emphasizes the underlying issues of freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom from the tyranny of the stupid. I highly recommend it.

It’s unfortunate that the word “debate” still needs sarcasm quotes to emphasize the phoniness of the contest that motivates the story. Anyone who still entertains the insufferable notion that there can be some sort of compromise between myth and science must not know about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial of 2005, which made it essentially impossible for the hillbilly states to entertain the fantasy of “both sides of the argument” in textbooks. This play yanks us back to 1925, and when the prosecutor, Matthew Harrison Brady, is cross examined on the unscientific absurdity of the bible, it now sounds more like pure comedy than intellectual gamesmanship.

This play’s real value is in the unexpected, such as the complex layering of Brady’s tone and character. The real William Jennings Bryan, on whom Brady is based, fought hard for women’s suffrage and against American imperialism. He hated big banks and was, at least superficially, a populist. Todd Jefferson Moore does a fine job of displaying this humanity, without overplaying the man’s phenomenal ignorance regarding science. When he proclaims “I’m more interested in the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks” his pride already sounds more wounded than bombastic. It’s a perfect foreshadowing of an exit that is somehow simultaneously ignominious and endearing.

Reginald Andre Jackson’s performance as Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow) is also a fresh breath of oxygen. He carefully modulates those places where Drummond’s frustration veers towards bullying, and his fervor always seems to encompass a larger world, not just the confines of the courtroom. The case itself evolves before our eyes and ears, the specifics gradually becoming less important than the underlying grand theme of scholastic honesty. Drummond’s sincerity and love of intellectual freedom somehow magically avoids obvious polemics, and that by itself is worth the price of admission. And the director, Greg Carter, has wisely amputated a bit of stage business at the very end, where the agnostic Drummond places a bible and “Origins of Species” side by side in his brief case. That could easily have wiped out all that the two principle actors had built.

My one big gripe with the show is in the performance of Nick Garrison as the cynical reporter E. K. Hornbeck (a stand in for H. L. Menken). His snarky line readings ranged from gay to gayer to gayest. This made absolutely no dramatic sense given the 1925 time frame, and was utterly unfaithful to the determinedly heterosexual life of the real Menken. It was an especially weird intrusion given that the original script has been augmented with several choice Menken quotes, shortening the distance between fact and fiction. Now, if Garrison is gay offstage I don’t really care. But when an actor is playing a heterosexual character on stage his right to be gay evaporates. Using a non-gay role as an excuse for sexual self-expression or fulfillment is unfair to both play and audience. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a play almost derailed by this kind of irrelevant grandstanding, and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. Actors, please head this advice: A stage is not a float in a gay pride parade.