Santino Fontana continues to emerge as one of the great talents of the New York stage in Sons of the Prophet, the latest confident from Stephen Karam. As some might remember, it was another Karam work, Speech and Debate, that inaugurated the Roundabout Underground four seasons ago. And so Prophet, which runs at the Roundabout main stage space the Laura Pels Theatre, represents the continued growth of two forces attached to the show: its leading actor and its very creator.

Prophet is a cluttered play that never quite moves in the linear ways we expect it to, charting as it does a period of epic change in the life of 29-year-old Joseph Douaihy (Fontana), who, like Karam himself, is a Pennsylvania-bred gay man of Lebanese descent. Hopefully unlike Karam, however, is the series of Job-like trials Joseph finds himself enduring.

An erstwhile runner with the potential to compete at the Olympics, Joseph has begun to experience an inflammation in his knees and additional symptoms that defy easy medical classification. Far worse, his father has passed away due to a heart attack that may or may not have been caused by a car accident when he drove into a deer decoy planted as a prank. This forces a change in his family dynamic once his ailing uncle Bill (Yusef Bulos) decides to move in with Joseph and his younger, also gay, brother Charles (Chris Perfetti).

Other complications ensue when Joseph meets and falls for a handsome news reporter, Timothy (Charles Socarides), covering the fallout from the deer accident. At the same time, the Douaihys are conflicted over the proper way to punish Vin, (Jonathan Louis Dent), the high school football star responsible for it. And Gloria (Joanna Gleason), Joseph’s seemingly absent-minded publishing boss, keeps pressing him to turn his Maronite family’s history into book fodder.

Karam demonstrates a keen understanding of both pain and suffering, and the difference between the two – that as awful as pain may be, whether it be physical or emotional, it’s easier to deal with hurt that can be explained than that which lingers without explanation or even the promise of relief. Prophet’s characters are all woeful in their own way. Even Gloria and Vin are haunted by ghosts of their damaged pasts.  Director Peter DuBois reins in all of these story arcs with the right balance of sensitivity and a humor that borders, but never trespasses, on the absurd. The show recognizes that comedy can emerge in the most serious of moments, and how even the tensest of situations can eventually feel banal. Take, for example, a scene in which Joseph and Charles fight following the former’s spinal tap. Or an ongoing funny-sad gag in which Uncle Bill must leave the door open while using the toilet.

The playwright achieves this by couching Prophet as a reinterpretation of Khalil Gibran’s massive seller, The Prophet. Superscripts create chapters for Joseph’s journey based on the book, such as “On Pain,” “On Friendship,” and “On Reason & Passion.” Karam has a lot on his plate, but the crowded play is never clumsy. He examines every aspect of Joseph’s torment, recognizing that the people in his life who frustrate him the most are also the ones that might offer the most succor. (The character of Gloria, is the only one that times borders on caricature.)

As such, the acting in Prophet is uniformly terrific (Lizbeth Mackay and Dee Nelson offer solid work in a series of supporting roles). What is most curious is how several of these actors – Bulos, Gleason, Socarides – are able to communicate so much about their characters while still keeping secrets about their motivations. Fontana, on the other hand, bares Joseph’s scared, weary soul in a performance that doesn’t have a false note and calls no unnecessary attention to the many small but essential strokes of genius that the performer utilizes to bring this subtle, distinctive character to life.

Unlike the mysterious malady that plagues Joseph, it’s all too easy to trace the source of Prophet’s searing glory: the clever Karam. One is hopeful that it is not long before his symptoms appear yet again in some form on the stage.

----- Doug Strassler

Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org