
DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060063

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Theater review

SOURCE: BY MONTAGUE GAMMON III, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

PLOT INTRICACIES BEDEVIL ``GHOST IN THE MACHINE''

WELL-ACTED AND well-directed, the Generic Theater's production of ``Ghost in the Machine'' is as layered as fine French pastry, and as dry as day-old melba toast.

Even the most ardent fan of intellectual complexity will eventually find a situation where intricacy, displayed solely for its own sake, becomes arid. In this play, that happens somewhere in the first of its two acts.

Wes, a middle-aged academic, misses $50 from his wallet. He tells his wife, Nancy, that he suspects their houseguest Kim, lover of Nancy's friend Matt, is the thief. Searching Matt and Kim's room, Nancy finds a $50 bill, which she rather inexplicably reclaims or perhaps steals, since there is no way to prove whose money it is. There follows a whole lot of palaver along the lines of, ``She'll know that we knew, but then we know that she knows that we knew, so she'll know that we . . . '' and so forth.

Meanwhile, back at the campus, musicologist Matt announces a startling discovery he has made with computer expert Kim's help. A program she wrote has supposedly found, in the midst of a piece of supposedly randomly generated modern music composed by one Ming Schuman, a supposedly spontaneously occurring 19-note quotation from ``A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.'' Of course, only Kim can understand or vouch for the software that discovered this.

During Matt's painstakingly detailed description of the multistep compositional process, even aficionados of the arcane will likely find their eyes rolling back in their heads.

Now it turns out that Kim is an expert in game theory and the use of computers to generate mind-bogglingly elaborate game structures, which she describes to Wes while he either tries to get her to say something about the missing money or tries to seduce her, or both.

Pretty soon, levels of deception and uncertainty proliferate and the whole construction of multiple puzzles begins to resemble something a severely obsessive and highly intelligent child would build out of Tinker-Toys.

That is to say, the structure is all out in the open, displaying every connection self-consciously, begging for admiration but incapable of supporting anything but itself. It becomes just another facile adolescent take on the uncertain nature of reality and knowledge.

The actors, under Steven Harders' direction, do acquit themselves quite admirably. Sheila Walters is especially good as Nancy, giving a well-modulated performance revealing both an impressive range and a sense of delicacy. As the manipulative Kim, Joylyn Williamson is sharp, sensuous and compellingly real, while Wade Brinkley turns in a well-realized, shaded performance as Matt. Christopher Kypros makes an especially impressive stage debut in the role of Wes, and Charles Burgess is every bit the professional in his one scene as a senior musicologist.

Puzzles can be great fun to solve, but even fans of crosswords would rarely describe them as an interesting spectator sport. If this collection of obscurities didn't take itself so seriously, one would think that David Gilman had written it to spoof academic endeavors.

Generic uses an amusing one-act play called ``A Sure Thing'' as a curtain-raiser. David Ives' script, about variations on a coffee-shop pick-up, gives John Anderson and Lee Christopher a chance to show some nicely crafted acting. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

JAN HARRIS

Joylyn Williamson and Christopher Kypros star in ``Ghost in the

Machine'' at the Generic Theater.

Graphic

THEATER REVIEW

What: ``Ghost in the Machine'' by David Gilman

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Through

Nov. 23

Where: Generic Theater, 912 W. 21st St., Norfolk

Tickets: $8-$12

Call: 441-2160