Theater people love empathy. All that understanding how someone else feels, all that making the world a more compassionate, less toxic place, it gives us endorphins. One local theater, San Francisco Playhouse, even calls itself “the empathy gym.”

One achievement of “Just for Us,” Alex Edelman’s delightful solo show, is to probe empathy’s limits but without being cynical or nihilistic about it. In the piece, about infiltrating a white nationalist meeting after enduring antisemitic attacks on social media, Edelman starts out gung ho, even self-congratulatory, about his self-assigned mission. “I am so brave,” he tells himself, jogging about the stage of the Curran Theater, where the show’s three-night run opened Thursday, Oct. 26, under the direction of Adam Brace.

The jogging never stops. Edelman marries a Gilbert Gottfried-esque timbre to the can’t-stop-won’t-stop physicality of Richard Simmons. At one point, fetching a water bottle, he flings its cap offstage, as if he doesn’t have time to set it down. His prancing gait is always course-correcting, then zigzagging back to correct the course correction. It’s a physical manifestation of the way his comedian’s mind works: His actions and choices come into being only to be scrutinized, commented on, made fun of. By him.

That’s another achievement of “Just for Us”: Edelman’s observational acumen, which he sics on both himself and others with equal precision. The reason you go on social media? “You want to be offended.” How could a stranger tell he’s Jewish? “My name or my face or anything about my personality” — a line blasted through as if it were all one long German word. A set piece about the time in childhood when he and his brother first learned about Christmas — they grew up in an extremely insular world — is a triumph of contemporary Jewish humor.

The details Edelman shares about the white nationalists are just as redolent. The sign directing participants to the Queens apartment where the meeting takes place is written in Comic Sans. White nationalists nod in agreement with each other with the socket-splitting furor of a headbanger at a rave.

But soon Edelman finds himself in the confusing situation of wanting to be liked by the people who ipso facto hate him. Part of it is his performer’s instinct; Edelman makes the shrewd parallel that performing for us at the Curran isn’t entirely different from performing for that hateful group. But another part of it is something more universal, a deeply human quality that can’t help but reach out and seek a smile and a nod in spite of itself.

Often, Edelman’s delivery abruptly ratchets up the volume, his mumblecore vaulting into caw. It gives the whole show an edge, keeping you wondering what these white nationalists, no matter how inept they are, will do once they figure out who Alex is.

It’s no spoiler to say that Edelman comes out alive, and it’s probably not one to say that he does not, in a single meeting, convince a horde of bigots to see the error of their ways and repent. Empathy — epitomized in that moment where Edelman realizes that these people are sad sacks, which might help motivate their heinous ideology — didn’t work here.

但这并不意味着他在没有价值deavor. The point isn’t that the attempt to empathize made him feel good about himself, nor is it only that he got material for a great show out of it. Empathy is a valuable tool, but it can’t be a limitless well of turn-the-other-cheek compassion. “Just for Us” reveals and champions other tools in the kit of life: self-possession, self-respect and the ability to use art to make a sly point.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com