“We’re losing our public spaces,” said playwright Steve Yockey. His solution: a time-bending dark comedy, Bleeding Hearts, which has prompted long debates among audience members after readings all over the country. Now it’s finally getting its world premiere at the Atlanta-based Theatrical Outfit Jan. 28-Feb. 22. What’s getting everyone riled up? The growing disappearance of middle-class Americans.

Known for dark comedies (TV shows The Flight Attendant and Dead Boy Detectives, the plays afterlife: a ghost story, very still & hard to see, Blackberry Winter, and Venus, coming to Atlanta’s Actor’s Express in April), Yockey began Bleeding Hearts in 2016. This longer-than-usual gestation has given him time to hone the comedy, watch the play’s themes evolve with the times, and shape “a super clean play,” as he put it.

The script may be clean, but the characters end up anything but. As a middle-class couple figures out how best to help (or discard) an unhoused man carrying a bloody knife, while fending off their thieving upper-class neighbor, gory messes and unsettling whistling ensue. This heightened, absurd world, in which time barrels forward, then slams the brakes at key moments, is Yockey’s portrait of the way people push aside their feelings about inequality and exploitation.

This insight has proven to be nonpartisan. Director Sean Daniels noted that in “blue states, red states, purple states, everybody is relieved to finally have a current piece” that captures middle-class malaise. Daniels, who co-founded the Atlanta improv troupe Dad’s Garage and trained there with Yockey, has since worked all over the country. Despite having known each other for decades, this is the pair’s first full production together. But Bleeding Hearts isn’t just a homecoming for them; they’ve also landed at a fitting place for the play.

“Atlanta is the real crossroads of our country,” said Daniels. “It’s wildly diverse, in every sense of the word.” They’re hoping for lively talkbacks, but mileage may vary. Said Daniels of the unsettling themes underlying Yockey’s hilarious script, “How deep you want to go is up to you.”