Playwright: Romulus Linney. At: Eclipse Theatre Company at the Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-404-7336; $25. Runs through: Dec. 20
America's bicentennial celebration in 1976 inspired a number of timely critiques on the hitherto-unprecedented government "of the people, by the people, for the people"among them, Preston Jones' The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, David Rabe's Streamers, and Robert Altman's Nashville. Romulus Linney's contribution was Democracy, an adaptation of essayist Henry Adams' only two novels ( on which the copyright had apparently expired ) .
Our setting is Washington, D.C., during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant ( 1869-1877 ) . Our heroines are the widowed Madeleine Lee, and the Supreme Court magistrate's daughter Esther Dudleywomen independent in both income and temperament. ( Esther wears riding breeches, dabbles in photography, and gallantly offers her arm to ladies. ) Their suitors are, respectively, Silas Raitcliffe, a senator from Illinois, and Stephen Hazard, an Episcopal minister. Amid the labyrinthine intrigues of diplomatic circles, the eligible bachelorettes weigh the merits of love, social position and moral principle in the selection of a husband.
Their romantic dilemmaswhich end differently than we might expectis merely a pretext for Adams' satirical observations on power games and human nature, with the urbane Bulgarian ambassador, Baron Jacobi, and the outspoken Miss Lydia Dudley acting as our guides. The picture that emerges is that of politics very like those today, conducted by representatives no more honest than their civic statusand/or hopes of improving itallow. ( Jacobi, by the way, is a "pederast" and Aunt Lydia, a spinsterdo you detect a pattern in the assignment of free-thinking privileges? ) .
Adams/Linney's incisive repartee could have made for a Shavian comedy of male pomposity punctured by female candor. But somewhere in this Eclipse Theatre production's creative gestation, the text's lofty intellectual tone was deemed too visually torpid for modern audiences, and scenic designer Chris Jensen set to work on an abstract arrangement of outsized gears, wheels and pistonspresumably representing the "machinery" of government ( but how, then, do the faux-footlights fit into this metaphor? ) .
Despite the efforts of its sturdy cast, this nursery-room decor cannot avoid rendering the characters droll and cartoonish. Larry Baldacci as the baron, Barbara Roeder Harris as Miss Lydia, Jon Steinhagen as senator Raitcliffe and Nina O'Keefe as an enchanting Esther occasionally breach their environmental obstacles to engage, rather than distance, our involvement in the issues under scrutiny. But these rare moments are almost whollywell, eclipsed by the clash in presentational styles infecting any potential enjoyment of Democracy's still-timely arguments.