It was just the second production from Fort Lauderdale company Island City Stage, but The Timekeepers became the year's underdog success story when it won all six of its nominated categories, including Best Production of a Play, at the Carbonell Awards. Why? First, it's a brilliantly written play, by Dan Clancy, that touches important subject matter — homophobia, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust — without being depressing or messagey. It's set in a Nazi labor camp, where a flamboyant gay man and a retiring Jewish man are forced to spend their days repairing timepieces. But they need to get over their own prejudices against each other before they can turn their abysmal situation into a shared life that's worthwhile, even if that life has a limit at the bottom of a box of watches. The play's tone is not an easy one to strike, but Michael Leeds' direction for Island City Stage was deliberate yet transfixing, and the interactions of his cast felt heart-stoppingly authentic. Michael McKeever, an accomplished playwright and comic actor, showed us an entirely new persona onstage, tapping dramatic reservoirs of which I didn't know he was capable. The Carbonell-winning sound design, with its crackle of vinyl records, blankets of gunfire, and metronomic tick of pocket watches, helped bring the stunning scenic design to bracing life.