Playwright: Tom Stoppard. At: Signal Ensemble, 1802 W. Berenice . Phone: 773-347-1350; $20. Runs through: Sept. 18
No sooner do three plays exhibit similar structures than a fourth comes along to mock their stylistic elements. But even in 1968, a young Tom Stoppard bent on ridiculing the values of the previous generation couldn't resist flaunting an intellect defying parody to this day.
On the surface, the titular play is a send-up of the thriller-melodrama, a dramatic genre usually revolving around respectably helpless citizens and their comical servants menaced by a sociopathic villain whom they escape only through the intervention of a high-ranking public guardian ( e.g., a police inspector, but rarely a uniformed patrolman ) . In this case, our setting is an isolated country house, and our premise, the usual welter of family secrets, romantic intrigue and unexplained deathsthe last evidenced by a conspicuously displayed corpse that goes curiously unnoticed by the other characters.
But that's not all: framing this scenario is the equally conspicuous presence in the playhouse of two reviewers for rival newspaperschief critic Birdboot and second-stringer Moon. They pay scant attention to the event in progress, preferring to pontificate from their press box, when not pursuing their own individual agendas ( Birdboot has a date with the leading lady ) that is, until they suddenly find themselves introduced into the onstage action, where they fit into its artificial universe disturbingly well.
It's not over yet, however! Beneath the world-of-the-theater inside joke lies a commentary on the rigid class barriers upheld by the profiling inherent, not only in our whodunit, but those elected to evaluate it. The irony comes to its climax with the discovery of the murderer and his choice of victims.
There are clues, of coursenote the interaction between Moon and Birdboot involving the latter's cache of expensive chocolates, especially in light of their successors' preferred snacks. Still, keeping abreast of the many levels of consciousness for 75 minutes presents a challenge. But Signal Ensemble director Ronan Marra has located our kibitzers full upstage ( after Birdboot makes a token search for his seat among his real-life counterparts ) and cast John Steinhagen and Philip Winston, uniformly large men with large faces, as the squabbling Birdboot and Moon. Thus, even with the satire unfolding in Melania Lancy's Victorian-gothic parlor ( whose set dressing alone deserves its own museum tour ) , our focus is easily steered toward the sphere under scrutiny for the moment to render this ambitious production a worthy inauguration of the company's new North Center quarters.