It took me a long time to get around to catching Ground Up and Rising‘s production of Martin McDonagh’s provocative play, The Pillowman. The raw, young company has already presented two versions of the play over the past year, one down in Homestead and the other during the Miami Beach Sleepless Night. While I can’t report on those versions, what I saw this afternoon at the Little Stage Theater at SoBe Arts was riveting.

I dragged my feet because I’d seen the show on Broadway, starring Jeff Goldblum (Tupolski), Billy Crudup (Katurian), Zeljko Ivanek (Ariel) — and I was reluctant to see another version. Yet Ground Up and Rising’s cast and crew measured up, though to very different effect. First, the tiny, forlorn Little State Theater is an even better venue than the Booth for this particular play, putting the audience right in the the interrogation room with the literally tortured author Katurian, played with a full range of emotion by Curtis Belz.

The actors’ youth makes the banter between bad cop Ariel’s (Bechir Sylvain) and good cop Tupolski (Sheaun McKinney) less world-weary than the script would suggest, but what they lack in experience, they make up in swagger. Youth sits well with Michal, Katurian’s child-man brother, amping up the horror behind his misdeeds.

Ground Up and Rising is a prescient name for this scrappy company, whose members are scattered across the country in Los Angeles and New York as well as Miami, chasing the dream of breaking into mainstream film and stage. We are lucky to have them here in the meantime, making of Miami an affordable laboratory for the young actors and directors to challenge themselves and grow.