Thanks to Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” modern audiences slip easily into the shadowy, foreboding Victorian London that is the setting of Bernard Pomerance’s “The Elephant Man,” playing at Manoa Valley Theatre through Dec. 4.

The play, which debuted in London’s Hampstead Theater in 1977, won the Tony Award for best play in 1979 and the Drama Desk Award for outstanding revival of a play in 2015.

This revival is also outstanding.

“The Elephant Man” is based on the brief life of John Merrick, a severely deformed, highly intelligent and sensitive young man who earns his keep on display in a freak show. Rescued by a hospital surgeon, he rises socially — befriended (and patronized) by aristocrats — within limits, of course.

Paul Mitri’s enchanting, utterly convincing embodiment of the charismatic Merrick is the heart of a production that fully realizes the timeless aspect of the play: It captures the social mores and hypocrisies of its period while holding up a glass to our own.

The sense of entitlement and heedlessness of the privileged, cultured classes are a major theme here, asking theatre goers to consider how we treat those who look and behave differently.

The action opens in the seedy, crime-ridden streets of Whitechapel, where Ross (John Wells), the Cockney showman, invites audiences to pay to view Merrick. Ross introduces another of the play’s themes: “In order to survive … he exposes himself to crowds.”

Frederick Treves (Rob Duval), a prosperous, self-satisfied young surgeon in an age where doctors, such as Freud, could attain celebrity, “borrows” Merrick to show to his colleagues at London Hospital. Standing next to Duval, Mitri, covered until now by a burlap sack with eye holes, appears as his natural self. Then, as Treves graphically describes Merrick’s condition, Mitri twists his face, one hand and posture into subtle contortions. It’s a brilliant device that provides just enough to convey the character’s disabilities and deformity while we have seen, as it were, the inner man.

The hospital director, Carr Gomm (Saul Rollason) writes a letter to the newspapers that results in generous funding to maintain Merrick in the hospital. Treves’ goal for Merrick is “normality, as far as possible. So he can be like us.”

He insists on gratitude and makes Merrick repeat after him, “If I abide by the rules I will be happy.”

An employee who brings a pal to gape at Merrick is fired. Merrick, who spent his childhood in the workhouse, worries about the man’s family. “If all that stared at me had been sacked there’d be whole towns out of work,” he says. Mitri draws laughter with his dry, understated delivery of this and other Merrick lines.

Treves introduces Merrick to a leading actress, the quick-witted, perceptive Mrs. Kendal (a superb, sparkling Therese Olival). The transformation in Kendal’s face from acting to understanding as she perceives Merrick’s true, inner self is deeply moving; the two become fast friends.

Kendal introduces Merrick to duchesses, lords and the princess of Wales, who visit and adore him for his wit and his project, a model of a church he is building with his one good hand.

However, after Kendal partially disrobes for Merrick, who has never seen a woman’s body (the actress appears nude from the waist up), Treves banishes her.

“If your mercy is so cruel, what do you have for justice?” a disconsolate Merrick asks his doctor.

After all, the hospital has benefited from public generosity on behalf of the Elephant Man, who earns nothing besides room and board. (Exploitative as Ross was, he did pay Merrick a share of the take before ultimately robbing and abandoning him.)

While Merrick has a home now, he is essentially a captive in it, without independence or control over his fate, or so it would seem. He does become more normal; it’s up to the audience to decide if that’s a good thing.

Meanwhile, Treves — whose depths and complications Duval draws well — realizes that, as he himself rises in society, he becomes more grotesque.

All aspects of this splendid production — acting and accents, direction by Mitri and Alex Munro, Victorian costumes, modern set and lighting, music and sound — support the play’s explorations of illusion and identity and how we project ourselves upon those we see, whether in the circus, in films and plays, or on the sidewalks.

Manoa Valley Theatre’s astonishing and discerning “Elephant Man” should be seen and discussed now.