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

One Arm

Playwright: Tennessee

Williams & Moises Kaufman

At: About Face & Tectonic Theatre

Project at Steppenwolf

Call: ( 312 ) 335-1650; $20-$55

Runs through: Dec. 19 only

By Jonathan Abarbanel

My hustler friend, Billy, once earned $100 at the Drake Hotel, although his john never touched him. Billy merely flexed his considerable biceps for an hour. He was 24 then, the pinnacle of dark-haired physical perfection, an inviolable icon of masculine beauty. One Arm uncannily channels Billy, confirming the truth of Tennessee Williams' observations in this world premiere, adapted from Williams' short story and unproduced screenplay.

One Arm is a reverse picaresque. Hero Ollie Olson begins with confidence, enthusiasm, naiveté, physical prowess and surpassing unselfconscious beauty, and loses them all. His arm axed in an accident, the champion boxer ( referred to as 'the boy' ) learns men will pay for the body and face in which he sees only mutilation. His self-respect crumbles completely when he realizes his stump is a fascinating imperfection that humanizes his otherwise god-like beauty. Ollie's body 'had the nobility of some broken Apollo that no one ever could carve so purely again,' Williams writes. Like marble, Ollie seems emotionally dead.

Williams' circumspect narration, and Janice Pytel's costuming, summons the closeted 1940s and Ollie's unpleasant journey as straight trade in the sexual underground. Exploiter and exploited, Ollie victimizes his johns and feels 'no shame that green soap and water couldn't wash clean.' Yet he describes even heterosex—a woman licking his feet and blowing him—as 'unnatural things' in this tale about beauty and self-worth. There's some Joe Buck ( Midnight Cowboy ) in Ollie, too, betrayed through occasional acts of kindness or rage that fuel the thin, anecdotal storyline.

One Arm has received a fine theatrical launch; an elaborate physical production that's intensely felt, moody, lit to dramatic chiaroscuro effect and blessed with Reynaldo Rosales' convincing lead performance. A darker, more chiseled and muscular Matt Damon, Rosales is onstage constantly with his right arm frozen at his side—the convention for his armlessness—and his emotions nearly as rigid. Still, he reveals the conflicted, lonely, desperate and none-too-bright young man underneath.

Director/adapter Moises Kaufman may take two years developing One Arm which, despite initial strengths, might be more effective. We need backstory for Ollie, a few early expository details and an intimate emotional scene before the accident. That way, we might better judge Ollie's physical and emotional journey. Above all, in Act I we should see Ollie as his clients do and not from the narrator's aloof perspective. Frankly, we need more arousal, sensuality and idealized beauty. The audience should be taken in by Ollie ( especially with Rosales ) , seduced in spite of itself. There's plenty of time for the narrative tone to turn cool and the perspective to darken. Right now, Kaufman is as circumspect as Williams' carefully coded 1945 words. The next step for One Arm should be enlarging Williams, not merely staging him.

The Importance Of Being Earnest

Playwright: Oscar Wilde

At: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.

Phone: ( 773 ) 753-4472; $35-$50

Runs through: Dec. 26

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

There is an instant of comic genius in the third act of this Court Theatre production, occurring when the aristocratic Lady Bracknell remarks, 'When I married Lord Bracknell, I had no fortune of any kind, but I never dreamed for a moment of allowing that to stand in my way,' and as she does, her lofty accent lapses into one of distinctly humbler origins. The humor of this moment is text-engendered, character-driven and would be downright brilliant if not surrounded by day-glo clutter of the sort associated with Toys 'R' Us outlets.

Geoffrey M. Curley's scenic design apes that of a playroom, with furniture comprised of large climbing-blocks—representing, at various times in the course of the play, London landmarks, garden hedges and a parlor upholstered in relentless Moby Grape velvet—upon which actors leap, lounge, roll and scamper as if coached by Michael Kidd, but whose cumbersome construction make for protracted scene changes. Likewise contributing to the evening's herky-jerky tempo is the conspicuous presence of 'music director' Doug Peck, clad in white tux and seated at white piano, punctuating the dialogue with incidental music after the manner of 19th-century melodrama, a genre also inspiring light designer Marcus Doshi to lowlight Significant Speeches in lurid chiaroscuro.

Costume designer Jacqueline Firkins, refusing to be eclipsed, dresses Lady Bracknell in Halloween colors for her first appearance, Wicked Witch of the West drag for her second, and gives Gwendolen the face of Elizabeth I, complete with invisible eyebrows. And did I mention the quasi-Gilbert & Sullivan ditty? The balletic poses? The matador choreography with the smoking jacket?

The company assembled by Charles Newell are a talented and hard-working bunch. But in a show where such common words as 'irrevocable', 'secretive' and 'forte' are mispronounced ( and dialect coach Claudia Anderson never decides if 'Bunbury' is to be rendered 'bun-bree' or 'bun-bear-ee' ) , such an excess of Creative Cutes showered over three hours in an underheated auditorium quickly grow tedious. When Oscar Wilde's mercurial language becomes the repartee's GROUNDING factor, what we have is artistic affectation with no apparent goal beyond reveling in its own contrariness.

Mojo

Playwright: Jez Butterworth

At: Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan Rd.

Phone: ( 773 ) 871-0442; $18-$22

Runs through: Jan. 9

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

Before the early 1960s' so-called 'British Invasion' of American pop culture, Yankee music reigned in Jolly Old, where pioneer rockers such as Elvis Presley and Little Richard made hillbilly drawls and delta screeches as de rigueur among English teenagers as Liverpool twitters would later become in the United States. But where there's money, there's greed—and lurid stories of Mob involvement also comprised a part of the rock-and-roll mystique.

Jez Butterworth's gritty homage to this seedy chapter of R & R history sits us down in the back room of Ezra's Atlantic, a Soho music club, the headliner for which is a Jackie Wilson-wannabe named Silver Johnny. Offstage, Ezra is discussing Johnny's career with a high-roller named Sam Ross—whom we never see, relying instead on ringside commentary delivered by assistants Sweets, Dobbs and Skinny at amphetamine-fueled tempo, worded in a hipster argot so arcane as to require translation even among themselves. At closing time, club manager Mickey, allegedly home with a cold, suddenly arrives to announce that their employer has been murdered—news that Baby, Ezra's son, receives with curious calm.

And at that point, David Cromer's direction distinguishes this Mary-Arrchie production from whatever past interpretations we may recall. Butterworth's quasi-Mamet repartee abruptly ceases its stichomythic pace, ensuring our complete comprehension of every double, triple and quadruple-cross inflicted by and on men suddenly fearing for their jobs and their lives. And as trust and loyalties—qualities scarce in this universe—are tested, the intimate quarters of the freshly-licensed Angel Island loft space allow us to observe nuances as minuscule as an actor shifting his gaze from one dubious ally to the other.

Dan Waller as the paranoid Sweets, Hans Fleischmann as the opportunistic Potts, Sean Cooper as the pragmatic Mickey, Robert Fagin as the effete Skinny, newcomer Carlo Lorenzo Garcia as the enigmatic Baby, and Brad Bukauskas ( who dangles head-down like a bat for 30 minutes in the course of the action ) as the hapless Johnny together comprise one of the finest ensembles seen this season. The technical team—in particular, Josh Schmidt and Andy Sewell's sound design—likewise conspire to render impressive this auspicious comeback of a company lying fallow for too long.

Peer Gynt

Playwright: Henrik Ibsen

At: The Artistic Home, 1420 W. Irving

Phone: ( 773 ) 404-1100; $18-$20

Runs through: Jan. 16

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

In the folklore of every culture, there is the 'trickster'—a personage of humble birth, usually male, lacking in education but rich in cunning, whose perpetual discontent spurs him to seek adventure. His hallmark is an audacious curiosity, his deeds neither virtuous enough to earn him the title of hero, nor sufficiently malicious to brand him a villain. He might be called Ulysses, Wu-K'ung or Coyote, Tom Jones, Harry Flashman or Huckleberry Finn. In Norway, he is Peer Gynt, and in 1867, he was conscripted by Henrik Ibsen as the personification of the outlaw who rejects conventional morality to live according to his own personal code.

Staging this picaresque fable, however, presents difficulties associated with Romantic literature adapted to the stage. Gynt's travels encompass not only his native country, but such exotic locales as a pavilion in Morocco, a palace in the Sahara, an insane asylum in Cairo, a shipwreck on the North sea, and the underground kingdom of the Trolls. And how are audiences in 2004 America to feel about a protagonist who engages in shady colonialist practices like slave-trading, who woos and abandons a succession of women, who reels off self-aggrandizing tall tales without hesitation—in short, who appears never to Learn His Lesson?

Modern theatre practice dictates that such episodic narratives extend for more than a single evening ( cf. Nicholas Nickleby ) , but in the hands of director Kathy Scambiatterra and The Artistic Home ensemble, Ibsen's potentially-cumbersome yarn emerges a breathtaking 2-1/2-hour action-epic, with players erupting from all corners of the storefront-sized room to whisk us from one provocative spectacle to the next. Leading the charge is John Mossman, monkey-scrambling up ropes, swinging across the ceiling on a grid of trapezes, and, at one point, crawling like a fly over a bare wall. Following close on his heels are eleven athletic actors portraying a total of 66 characters, ranging from Susan Burke's feisty matriarch to Miranda Zola's kittenish sphinx.

Facile phrases come to mind: 'low-budget Lion King', 'Mary Zimmerman-in-a-box'. However we may describe it afterwards, there is no denying the challenges undertaken by this bare-bones company, nor the immensity of their accomplishments.

The Doctor In Spite Of Himself & The Pretentious Young Ladies

Playwright: adapted by Page Hearn from plays by Moliére

At: City Lit Theatre at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr

Phone: ( 773 ) 293-3682; $18-$25

Runs through: Jan. 2

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

Moliére's hallmark was his applying principles reflecting the Age of Reason to the familiar personalities of the centuries-old Commedia Dell'Arte. So much do we associate him with courtly satire and intellectual wit, however, that we forget that he was also capable of humor as earthy as that of any itinerant Roman troupe beguiling a crowd of unlettered peasants. Ever willing to be fair, City Lit Theatre presents one example of each kind to open its 25th season.

Le Médecin Malgré Lui, better known to English-speakers as The Doctor In Spite Of Himself, employs such Punch-and-Judy elements as a couple whose marital accord is based in physical combat, while the husband's trade as a woodcutter engenders several double-entendres involving his merchandise. ( 'Dirty faggots!' he intones, brushing the dust off his bundles of kindling. Hey, you weren't offended when Charles Ludlam said it, so what's the problem now? ) . A ruse initiated by his wife persuades him to impersonate a doctor, in which guise he rescues a pair of lovers from their elders' obstructive machinations.

Played at the pace and dignity nowadays considered appropriate for interpretations of classical comedy, material rife with pseudo-scientific obfuscations and dog-Latin pronouncements would have emerged dreary as generations of academic productions have, indeed, rendered it. But director Page Hearn and an ensemble of seasoned farceurs, led by Thomas M. Shea as the facilitating quack, sprint through their text with the speed and agility of a Road Runner cartoon, never relinquishing control of their personae or their stage business even as they lob asides at us ( 'You probably thought you were going to get an intermission here!' a character teases after a particularly spectacular exit ) and Three Stooges-style slaps and shoves with each other.

The evening's afterpiece, Les Précieuses Ridicules ( aka The Pretentious Young Ladies ) , has been transposed to contemporary France so that Erin Kathleen Carlson and Michaela Petro's girls-gone-wild can be wardrobed as Paris and Nicole lookalikes, and the prankster sent by their boyfriends to administer their comeuppance tarted up in Adam Ant/Rocky Horror-show drag. Oo-la-la!

This Happy Breed

Playwright: Noel Coward

At: TimeLine ( sic )Theatre Company

Phone: 773 281-8463; $22

Runs through: Dec. 19

By Jonathan Abarbanel

When World War II began, Noel Coward put aside his signature sophistication to keep the home fires burning with patriotic plays and films. Never out to his public, Coward went deep into the closet to play a Royal Navy captain in the film In Which We Serve, and a middleclass family man in his 1942 drama This Happy Breed. In this rare revival, director Nick Bowling and a spot-on cast reveal This Happy Breed as a bright Coward gem. The play follows Frank and Ethel Gibbons and their three children from 1919 to 1939. Patriarch Frank Gibbons—the role Coward wrote for himself—is a World War I vet returning to a modest but comfortable London home. Coward was in his 40s at the time, a reminder that 20th Century world wars gobbled up men already well along in life. The Vietnam, Afghan and Iraqi wars give the impression that all soldiers are young men just starting out. But Frank Gibbons has been married 15 years, has adolescent children and wants nothing so much as normalcy.

The nine scenes are keyed to historic events—Franco's triumph in Spain, the Japanese annexation of Manchuria, Edward VIII's abdication, the Munich Agreement—splendidly contextualized for audiences by Mike Tutaj's potent newsreel collages and Andrew Hansen's evocative original music. Nothing much happens to the Gibbonses except life: in-laws bicker, Frank drinks with a buddy, son Reg dabbles in radical politics, the daughters marry or run away, people die, grandchildren are born. Through it all, Frank and Ethel remain steadfast, comforting, tolerant, salt-of-the-earth people. This is Coward at his middle-brow, sentimental best, espousing conservative politics and conventional social values in contradiction to his private life. It doesn't diminish the brilliance of his dramaturgy or the naturalness of his dialogue to characterize This Happy Breed as a war-time Father Knows Best.

Coward was a master craftsman who gave each character a wonderful set piece (or two or three) and carefully sequenced comedy and drama to manipulate pace and tension. Director Nick Bowling and his warm ensemble measure the rhythms and heart of this long work perfectly, paced by Tom Hamilton's full-blooded Frank Gibbons and Isabel Liss' graciously understated Ethel Gibbons. There's truth to their laughter and tears. Tom Burch's in-the-round scenic design is an excellent, new configuration for TimeLine. There's an appropriate 1920s bourgeois flavor to the patterned wood floor, cozy furniture and well-selected lighting fixtures. Nicole Rene Burchfield's costume budget mostly provides stylish but not flamboyant women's fashions that cover the play's 20 years. Men mark time with little-changing dark suits, vests and the odd bowler hat, except for naval uniforms pleasingly worn by Abercrombie-trim Andrew Carter.

Go see This Happy Breed. You'll wish the Gibbonses well.

Omnium Gatherum

By: Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros

Next Theatre Company, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston

Phone: 847 475-1875; $20-$31

Runs through: Dec. 18

BY SCOTT C. MORGAN

There's something sinister lurking in the exquisitely well-appointed dining room of the Next Theatre Company's post-9/11 play Omnium Gatherum. Sure, everything is tastefully refined, just as you would expect a Martha Stewart-like hostess to obsess about.

Yet eventually you notice the faceless human forms writhing in pain amid the lovely rose-colored wall patterning. Then there's that metaphysical cabinet door that bizarrely spews smoke and blasts an unsettling vacuum-pressured sound. And don't forget the menacing helicopters that flyover.

All these odd occurrences do not stop the razor-sharp verbal sparring of the right-and-left-wing ideologues who lap up the luscious five-course meal prepared by the flittering hostess and lifestyle magnate named Suzie, the aforementioned Martha Stewart knock-off. Amid such an overindulgent culinary bounty (actually cooked by Chicagoland chefs from 10 different restaurants like Rushmore and Trio), these characters make what could only be described as 'a dinner party from hell' into one of the must-see theater events of the season.

Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros' Pulitzer finalist play is a heady comedy that creates a much needed dialogue over America's role in an unstable post-9/11 world. The fact the playwrights use characters modeled on celebrities only increases the enjoyment, deflecting any fears that you're in for an ideological trouncing.

In the intimate Next Theatre, Wendy Robie is gets most of the laughs as Suzie, the hostess who has brought together an eclectic collection of dinner party guests that can only be described as odd (the Latin-based meaning of the play's title). There's Doug McDade as the blustery right-wing Tom Clancy-like novelist who constantly gets up the goat of Lydia, an easily offended Susan Sontag-like vegan-feminist played with plenty of indignation by Elizabeth Laidlaw.

Joseph Wycoff's wry turn as the inebriated intellectual Terence is great, especially when he bandies his Cambridge education and parentage as an ideological club. Anish Jethmalani provides perspective as the middle-eastern scholar Khalid, while Penelope Walker, as the African American leader Julia, hilariously sends up one black stereotype while realizing that she's a token guest. Seemingly unaware of his token status is Tim Donovan's laconic New York firefighter, Jeff.

Into this mix Suzie throws in one more surprise guest (played by Bobby Zaman) who is very much a live grenade that shocks and awes the guests and audience alike. If the playwrights' intentions were to get audiences thinking and talking, Omnium Gatherum definitely succeeds.

The Next Theatre Company is also an unqualified winner with Omnium Gatherum, especially when you consider that more-powerful theaters like Steppenwolf and Goodman surprisingly passed on the play. Director Jason Loewith keeps things at a fever pitch, skillfully shifting the fine acting ensemble and the play's multiple tones like a master builder. And let's not forget the great work of respective set and sound designers Matthew J. York and Victoria DeIorio who both visually and audibly underpin the play's sinister and recriminating aspects.

By all means, get your tickets now to this probing play before it completely sells out. And eat first so you won't envy the feasting actors on stage.

A Christmas Carol

Playwright: adapted by Tom Creamer from the novella by Charles Dickens

At: Goodman Theatre, 175 N. Dearborn

Phone: 312 443-3800; $20-$60

Runs through: Dec. 26

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

If Scrooge hadn't been so stingy, would he have accumulated the fortune with which to be so generous following his conversion? What was the precise nature of Tiny Tim's crippling ailment? What's a humbug, anyway? Oh, we think ourselves familiar with Charles Dickens' classic fable, but are we, really? And what about those recently arrived members of our society for whom the annual explosion of angels, reindeer and 'Merry Christmas' are as new and exotic as Kwanzaa and (Eid) al Adha to us?

Director Kate Buckley rejects pretty-picture sweetness for this Goodman Theatre production, instead exploring the economic dimensions of her story: Scrooge's evil is not his money, nor is it the commerce by which he earns it, but that his pursuit of it has blinded him to its proper use—for what value is there in money, but for what it can DO? 'Mankind was my business!' declares Marley, and it is this philanthropic imperative that our protagonist neglects.

So how does this year's Christmas Carol, with so weighty a subtext, come to have more music and revelry in it than ever before? Buckley wisely highlights Scrooge's isolation by surrounding him in manifestations of benevolent unity. When even the humblest of citizens follows the path of seasonal jubilation (even his housekeeper toasts the holiday from her pocket-flask before raising her voice in Tidings Of Comfort And Joy), those who have strayed—willingly or otherwise—are easily recognized as misanthropes, to be shunned, quarantined or, as in Scrooge's case, rehabilitated.

If Buckley's first effort at engaging this complex classic seemed rather perfunctory, her 2004 rendition cannot be faulted technically. Joe Cerqua's score of incidental music lends a contemporary ambiance to the period setting, the ghostly magic is seamlessly integrated into the action (Lisa Dodson's Ghost of Christmas Past even turns somersaults on her fly-wires) and the dancing at Fezziwig's and Fred's as hearty and robust as if arising from sheer exuberance instead of choreographic skill. Indeed, all the actors seem more comfortably grounded in their roles, making for vivid characterizations in a coherent narrative speaking to cultures far beyond the scope of its original audience.

The Playboy of the Western World

Playwright: J.M. Synge

At: The Abbey Theatre at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier

Phone: 312 595-5600; $50-$70

Runs through: Dec. 12

BY RICK REED

One might not think there's much of a correlation between Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers and Irish playwright J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. But as I sat watching the latter and trying to process what the playwright was saying, I couldn't help but think of an opening line from Genet's novel: 'His handsome face, multiplied by the presses, swept down upon Paris and all of France, to the depths of the most out-of-the-way villages, in castles and cabins, revealing to the mirthless bourgeois that their daily lives are grazed by enchanting murderers, cunningly elevated to their sleep, which they will cross by some back stairway that has abetted them by not creaking.'

See, J.M. Synge's 97-year-old classic posits what Genet knew: that sometimes infamy can be as romantic and alluring as fame. Criminals can touch on ordinary lives, offering a kind of fascination, elevating those lives out of the mundane.

It is this kind of fascination that kicks off Synge's play (here in a flawless and compelling production by the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's National Theatre). Christy Mahon is a stranger who arrives in the shebeen (pub) of a small village on the coast of Ireland, boasting of having just killed his father with a loy (a special spade with an extra blade for cutting turf). Immediately, the charismatic stranger charms the townsfolk and his crime enhances his glamour, setting him on a different plane from their ordinary lives, whose chief occupations are drinking in the shebeen or worshipping at church. But none are as charmed as Pegeen Mike, daughter of Michael James, owner of the shebeen. Pegeen is already spoken for, but she forgets about her docile and much less exciting betrothed in favor of the dangerous and handsome Christy, who has the sex appeal bad boys have claimed since God knows when.

But Synge knew (and made this knowledge part of his point) that fascination with such characters could never come to a good end. In a surprising twist, Christy's presumed dead father appears, wounded but definitely still kicking. Christy is exposed as a liar, and his elevated stock immediately plunges. Trying to recoup the favor Pegeen and the townspeople bestowed on him, he kills his father (for real this time?), but the reality of murder, rather than its cachet, only puts Christy further in the bad graces of his former admirers. I won't reveal the play's final twist here, but it offers up a kind of punishment for veering away from accepted norms … for both Christy and Pegeen.

The Abbey's production, as one might expect, is a sparkling gem. After all, it was the Abbey who first produced Synge's masterpiece in 1907 (where its violence and subject matter caused rioting and national outrage) and it's only logical that theirs is the definitive production. Under the sure-handed direction of Ben Barnes, The Playboy of the Western World is beguiling, transforming the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's courtyard space into a close approximation of the Abbey's Dublin home (gone is the thrust stage in favor of proscenium). Guido Tondino's set design puts us down simply and realistically in the village tavern, with its weathered walls and a rim of lighted liquor bottles. Barnes' stylistic touches are restrained, which maximizes their impact. But finally, it's the ensemble that really makes this show sing … and the fine work by these Irish actors is beyond reproach, especially Tom Vaughan Lawlor (Christy), Cathy Belton (Pegeen), and Olwen Fouere (the Widow Quin). The Playboy of the Western World is a magical gift to American audiences.

Arcadia

Playwright: Tom Stoppard

At: Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Victory Gardens, 2259 N. Lincoln

Phone: 773 871-3000; $30-$35

Runs through: Jan. 2

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

Tom Stoppard's brain-twister may be viewed as a mystery story, seemingly disconnected tidbits of information later coming together in a recognizable pattern. Or it might be regarded as an odyssey of explorers doggedly searching for a treasure they know they are unlikely to find. Then again, it might be a romance, its denouement leaving us at once elated at its discoveries and sad over its losses. As a mirror-ball's reflection changes with the slightest movement, whatever vantage point we choose from which to look at this exercise in time-travel, our conclusions will be but a fraction of the total picture.

On the surface, the plot deals with three scholars seeking to reconstruct a short period in the 19th century with the assistance of documents stored on the Coverly clan's ancestral estate: Bernard Nightingale, a professor of Literature, pores over the household's personal correspondence. Hannah Jarvis, a pop-historian, believes the secrets of the past lie in the garden. And descendent Valentine Coverly, a graduate student of mathematics, delves the game-keepers' records. Initially, each sees no further than his/her own goals, but gradually they overcome their differences to consolidate their efforts. OUR advantage, however, is that we get to witness first-hand the events they struggle to bring to light—a struggle whose lofty goals and neat theories are constantly undermined by messy hormone-fueled emotional intrigue.

A temptation for actors faced with so intellectually-dense a script is to rely on oral interpretation alone, rendering the stage picture as visually inert as the tortoise nesting within the contents of the desk providing the focus of the action. But this is a PLAY, not a chamber reading, and director James Bohnen pours on the stage business to keep our eyes, as well as our ears, engaged.

His cast likewise employs both physical and verbal reminders of their character's temperaments (In particular, Nick Sandys as the academic Bernard and Linda Reiter as the flinty Hannah, both of whose personalities are evident even in moments of silent indecision so palpable we can almost see the wheels turning.) If the resulting tone is somewhat broader than we expect of Stoppard, its coherency more than redeems any perceived shortcoming.