In Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, which runs through Sept. 27 at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, playwright Jenny Lyn Bader has woven the bare historical facts of a real arrest into a taut and subtle intellectual thriller with frequent gleams of absurdist humor.

The play is set in Berlin in 1933, where a young Jewish woman is locked in a cell with her Nazi captor — and he’s reading her doctoral thesis on the philosophy of love.

Ella Dershowitz, who played the title role in two Off-Broadway productions in New York City, is an entirely compelling presence as Hannah Stern, who was arrested outside the library and charged with treason.

Her captor, officer Karl Frick (Brett Temple), says she was aiding Zionists against the German state by mimeographing anti-Semitic cartoons to send to the international press.

Hannah says she just wanted a strudel recipe from a newspaper at the library, where she’s also been doing research for a historical biography.

Ella Dershowitz shines in title role.

MJ Bruder Munafo

Ella Dershowitz shines in title role.

MJ Bruder Munafo

As Officer Frick continues interrogating her over the next several days, it becomes clear that both of them are barely keeping pace with a rapidly changing Germany.

A Jew living under martial law, Hannah has lost her civil rights. Her husband has fled the country. As a prisoner, she has lost her citizenship papers, and thus her statehood in the only homeland she’s ever known. And she faces a death sentence, or — as the audience knows — something even worse in the years to come.

Officer Frick, for his part, has lost the moral certainty that sustained him as a member of the criminal police before he was transferred to the political branch the previous week. Violent criminals were less complicated to deal with than all the political criminals created by the new German laws, the officer says.

“You were my first,” he confides to Hannah, before hastening to add, “I have arrested people before, of course, but not in this job.”

“Well, it’s obvious you’re doing a very good job already,” his prisoner tells him wryly.

Under further questioning, she reveals her maiden name: Hannah Arendt, known to history as the scholar who would escape Nazi Germany as a stateless refugee to become a leading historian and philosopher in America before dying in 1975.

That revelation both eases the audience’s anxiety over Hannah’s ultimate fate and recalls Ms. Arendt’s often-quoted phrase “the banality of evil,” from her Eichmann in Jerusalem report, as Officer Frick punctiliously questions her over and over.

It also suggests that, as convincingly innocent as Hannah appears, she very well might have been aiding the Zionists she claims not to support. Do her innocent appearance and conversational charm conceal deep secrets?

That mystery remains unsolved in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, which instead follows the often dazzling train of Hannah’s thoughts on literature, philosophy and art, intermixed with artful flattery aimed at her captor.

A disciplined young man with a steel-trap memory, Officer Frick nonetheless can’t help engaging in some of her conversational flights, even confiding in her about the challenges of his new position. It’s tough keeping an eye on everyone in Berlin, he says: “Even the Lutherans must be watched. One of us must listen to every sermon. We don’t want the wrong kind of inspiration to spread.”

Hannah’s copious written works — poetry, philosophical notes, even her diaries — are giving the political police a particularly hard time, Officer Frick tells her.

“We had to divide them up, or else we wouldn’t have been able to arrest anyone else all week. And you didn’t hear this from me, but some of the men on the police force are not fast readers,” he says.

As Hannah, Ms. Dershowitz is onstage for the entire show — 90 minutes, with no intermission — in a completely riveting performance that ranges from quiet despair, when the prisoner is alone, to something near joy as she and her captor discuss poetry, the Bible and childhood memories.

Mr. Temple is outstanding as Karl Frick, whose jackbooted uniform conceals an unexpectedly complicated nature.

The play’s third character, a Zionist attorney played by Drew Hirshfield, appears briefly to offer Hannah his services. Despite the constantly-changing Nazi laws, he says, he’s confident that he will be all right.

“I’m well regarded here, even by this administration. I fought in the Great War, and I have an Iron Cross medal and a missing Toad improvement,” he tells Hannah, who’s not convinced.

“I’m sure you find yourself mentioning that Iron Cross medal more often lately, yes, to reassure yourself,” she replies.

Along with its three strong actors, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is noteworthy for the minimal but expressive sound design by Megan Culley and lighting by Zachary Connell.

Ari Laura Kreith directs the show, which the playhouse is presenting in association with the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.

Curtain time is 7 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.