Playwright: Eric Simonson. At: Steppenwolf Theatre,, 1825 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-335-1650; $20-$48. Runs through: Nov. 8
The so-called "Piltdown Man" ranks among the greatest scientific hoaxes ever perpetrated. In the wake of Darwin's theories on evolution, the discovery in 1912 on English soil of a "missing link" between apes and humans found enthusiastic support in those most wanting for such an eventif only to refute the disturbing Teuton-supremacist theories emanating from Germany. Thus, asserts author Eric Simonson, do people bereft of necessary facts turn to speculation and/or mysticism for comfort in troubled times. ( Consider our own myth of airline passengers mounting resistance against terrorists bent on destruction of our nation's capital. ) This propensity to actualization, which Steppenwolf Theatre proposes to explore this season, is all the more timely as technology renders rumor capable of spreading faster than ever before.
Simonson begins by presenting us with a conference called by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, for the purpose of exposing the half-monkey/half-human skull in question as a fraud perpetrated by an amateur anthropologist, a radical theologian and the curator of the museum exhibiting ithis witness, a hard-nosed female American journalist. The action soon leaps four decadesyes, very like Tom Stoppard's Arcadiato 1953, where a team of eggheads from the University of California, armed with the latest chemical-dating equipment, will produce proof of the artifact's bogus foundation.
Simonson could have fashioned this material into a cozy whodunitYankee skepticism triumphing in the end, of courseor a biting analysis of otherwise ethical men bending principles to their own advantage, in service of goals honorable, or not. He also could have made a compassionate plea for mortals, beset by uncertainty, driven to fabricating order in an unruly universeSir Arthur's opponents taunt him for his belief in spiritualism, and the connections between personal tragedy and scholarly curiosity in the life of founding father Darwin, himself, are explored. Or our playwright could invite discussion of all of these themes, and throw in some sex to raise the stakes a little more.
The dramatic device of the same five actors playing both the Edwardian parties-of-interest and their cold war-era counterparts makes for ironical overtones, sincesurprise!the disbelievers of one age are the proponents in the other. And except for our feminist newshound cussing in jarringly modern idiom, the unities of time and place are invoked with an impressionist accuracy sufficient to coax us into brain exercise as intellectually stimulating as the conundrum inspiring it.