THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

The plot is fundamentally a procedural ...not by detectives, as in a whodunit...but by scholars in 1993 bent on solving the mysteries presented by certain events of 1809. Bernard Nightengale is hot on the trail of superstar Lord Byron, Hannah Jarvis is searching for the identity of an aristocratic clan's pet hermit, and Valentine Coverly, assisted by antique game-records, is applying calculus principles to the breeding of grouse on the family estate. We are privy to information withheld from them, since the business they pursue so doggedly occurs right before our eyes. The discrepancies between the frequently frivolous facts ( randy mistresses, cuckolded husbands and a child who just might be a genius ) and the naive conclusions based in excessive reverence provide us intrigue and amusement until Time comes together to explain all.

So densely intellectual a narrative prohibits staging in the exaggerated scale for which the Hypocrites are renowned, forcing them to play their material pretty much straight. This they did at the preview performance I attended with an elegance and grace that belied their small budget and industrial surroundings, thanks to superlative dialect training by Susan Philpot, museum-accurate scenic and costume design by, respectively, Aaron Olewnik and Michelle Lynette Bush, and a cast that dances Stoppard's intricate figures with never a misstep.

Shouldering the heaviest burdens are Don Bender as the worst of academic ferrets and Donna McGough ( looking more like a young Glenda Jackson with every passing year ) as the best, with Mechelle Moe's virginal Thomasina Coverly and John Byrnes' witty Septimus Hodge representing the lone voices of Reason in an age of Romance. Not to be overlooked, however, are Steve Wilson's slyly satirical computer geek and Jennifer Grace's airheaded ingenue whose observation on the relationship of sex and science turns out to be more astute than all her pedantic peers' lofty pronouncements.