Dear women, men are hurting, and it’s your fault. That’s the notion a damaged and misogynistic TJ nurses in Corrib Theatre’s excellent, disturbing thriller Stilt.

Inspired both by the rise of far right internet groups and the story of Rumpelstiltskin, this world premiere, directed by Holly Griffith and written by Joy Nesbitt, centers on TJ (a terrifyingly effective Max Bernsohn), a man who was born in an infamous Irish mother and baby home and harbors hatred for the birth mother who left him there.

Now living in a garbage dump of an apartment in Dublin (littered with beer bottles, laundry and wadded-up paper), TJ is visited by his affable brother, Chris (a natural and sympathetic Jonathan Hernandez), who lives in New York, where the two boys were raised by the presumably loving parents who adopted TJ.

The two men couldn’t be more different, and Ahmad Santos’ costumes reflect this internal disparity. The warm and caring Chris, who wears tidy clothes and pristine white sneakers, has no trouble saying he loves his brother. In contrast, TJ, a twitchy, jittery mess in a stretched-out t-shirt and long, fraying shorts, is incapable of receiving that affection.

An even deeper difference, though, is revealed when the brothers talk about women. Chris is engaged to someone named Belinda, and TJ relentlessly pokes at the relationship, throwing around crude terms for the female anatomy and suggesting Belinda calls all the shots and tricked Chris into agreeing to marry her.

TJ, however, has romantic feelings of his own for a woman named Fiadh (Olivia Mathews). Before we meet her, he glowingly talks about how she never makes him feel small and is always there for him when he needs her. Ring the alarum bell.

What is truly impressive about this play is how Nesbitt and Griffith adeptly walk a fine line, depicting a deeply unsettling scenario without ever, in my view – and others may feel differently – crossing a line into gratuitously sickening scenes. Yes, my stomach was in a knot during the entire second act of the perfectly paced Nov. 14 preview performance, but I also admire how sensitively the writer and director handled the triggering material.

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Much credit, too, must go to Mathews for her nuanced and believable performance. The first act alternates TJ’s story with scenes from the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin.” Portraying both Fiadh and the miller’s daughter, who in the Grimm story must spin straw into gold for a greedy king or else lose her life, Mathews does a beautiful job of creating characters who are defiant victims. In both cases, we can simultaneously feel her trapped-animal fear and her fierce rejection of anti-female attitudes, where women are either disposable or deserving of punishment simply because of their gender.

Throughout Act 1, there’s an increasing sense of menace – although there’s no gore, a butcher knife is a prominent prop – which is amplified by Daye Thomas’s uneasy sound, including the echoey tones of water dripping in a basement and something akin to a human laugh and a seagull’s cry. But even as TJ gradually descends into his dark interpretation of his favorite fairy tale, Bernsohn manages to present him as a human being … without demanding us to forgive his actions. We see this especially when he frantically tidies his apartment to impress Fiadh, a gargantuan task thanks to Kyra Sanford’s intentionally sloppy scenic design.

Similarly, a series of vignettes chronicling a night of dancing, drinking beer, and snorting coke also offers some touches of comic relief – especially when Chris plays a “Who am I?” game.

Before the show started, Griffith invited audience members to leave if they needed a break during the performance. The program also comes with content warnings and hotlines for people who are in distress. Along with a dialect coach (Denise Hoey) and fight director (Kristen Mun-Van Noy, with the assistance of Adam Mun-Van Noy), the creative team includes a trauma specialist (Rebecca Lyn Davis) who helped the actors understand their characters while taking care of themselves.

Knowing all this, I was, frankly, dreading the second act, and the projected shadows of a spinning wheel (lights by Kelly Terry) felt even more ominous than they had earlier. After having some time to process this act’s intensity, though, I’m in awe of the entire thought-provoking production.

In the program, Nesbitt notes that the radicalization of far-right young men in Ireland has inspired anti-immigration riots and violence against women. While in the past many of these voices have been ignored, Nesbitt says, “…[W]e tell ourselves absurd and oftentimes illogical stories to be able to understand the things we find incomprehensible.”

This brave play brilliantly takes on the seemingly impossible task of uncovering the implicit misogyny in an old tale, while showing how it’s connected to the ugly narratives that are being spun today.

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• Stilt will continue at the Historic Alberta House, 5131 N.E. 23^rd Ave. in Portland, through Dec. 7. Find schedule and ticket information here.