Insignificance

Terry Johnson's 1982 play "Insignificance" deals less in characters than avatars -- and what avatars he's chosen to inhabit the New York hotel room in 1954 where he's set the work.

Sen. Joe McCarthy, the man behind the hysteria around communists in the U.S., bullies professor Albert Einstein, author of, most famously, the Special and General Theories of Relativity; sexpot actress Marilyn Monroe proves her intellectual chops by explaining Einstein's own theories to him; and Joe DiMaggio plows through the play like a rampaging bull, snapping gum and so-not-getting the finer points (or any points) of the physics his wife is discussing with the professor. If this were a painting it might be titled "Boulevard of Broken Bones," because there's an undercurrent of physical aggression that breaks the surface on more than one occasion, and which draws the material tight with its nasty, anxious tug.

What are we to make of this?

The Nora Theatre Company's production of "Insignificance" has a few ideas on the subject, and you don't have to be a physicist to put it all together. Just as rock vanquishes scissors, and paper tops rock, there are a few elemental human factors -- like universal constants -- forever in play. Intellect, as represented by Einstein (identified only as "The Professor" in the play, and portrayed by Richard McElvain), risks blotting out Beauty (or Sensuality; either way, this is Marilyn, er, "The Actress," whom Stacy Fisher plays with nuance), while Beauty, in its turn, is forever at risk of eclipse from Brawn (DiMaggio, a.k.a., "The Ballplayer," given dashing treatment by Alexander Platt).

But everything else here is eventually flummoxed and overshadowed by Brutality (which "The Senator," played by Barr M. Press, delivers through insinuation and intimidation as much as by way of henchmen or his own fists).

There's a frothy, surreal comedy somewhere in Johnson's script (and if anyone has excavated it, it's probably Nicholas Roeg, who made a film version in 1985). In this production, the froth is inconsistent and fleeting, though the comedy is always there: Darker, in some passages, and bitter at times, and used effectively to contrast with shocking moments of physical harm and moral cowardice. (As for moments of intellectual short-circuiting, well, that's the essence of a certain stripe of comedy.)

What director Daniel Gidron and his cast do with seeming ease, and do quite well, is reach under the comedy and into the drama of the work: The Ballplayer and The Actress have a complex relationship -- not least because he more the dim bulb she's supposed to be, but also because, co-existing with his primal anger and hints at domestic violence, and her outward exasperation with him, is a strain of genuine love and tenderness.

The Professor, meantime, is practically paralyzed by the prospect of The Actress coming on to him (and, really, did she come knocking on his door at 3:00 a.m. for no other reason than to talk cosmology?). Is there no room amongst the elegant theorems the outline the shape and nature of the universe itself for something as wild and elemental as sex? (The Actress gives him sage advice here: "Have you ever noticed that 'What the hell' is always the right answer?" she asks.)

The play is a puzzle that loves throwing its own pieces into the air. The Actress gets the physics of The Special Theory of Relativity correct, and her demonstration of its key points plays like something from an episode of "Nova." Einstein is outwardly unimpressed by The Senator's threats (dedicated to the art of barbarianism and the ideology of ignorance, The Senator is all too happy to confiscate The Professor's life work, reams of equations, and use them as a pressure point; he's just as happy to needlessly, and maliciously, contemplate the work's destruction), but inwardly he quails before something that not even The Actress can pry out of him. (There is a suggestion that it's the specter of the neutron bomb -- the ultimate in the cynical discipline of weapons sciences.)

The Ballplayer's swaggering machismo is leavened with an almost martial code ("Are you a man of honor?" he likes to ask any male who crosses his path), and thrown into a degree of doubt by his proclamation that he's not truly stupid; he just likes to play the part. Even The Senator is given some margin for incongruity; he has flickers of desperation, even decency, to account (however slightly) for his conduct and his outlook.

It's all a bit as though, forgetting Einstein's dislike of quantum physics, Johnson were employing an uncertainty principle here: Look, he could be saying, these are concrete personae... and yet they are also their own opposites. They may, or may not, behave according to the rules of their stereotypes at any given moment; either way, we're never entirely sure of who they really are. Neither are they.

The play makes for an intriguing and polymorphous entity, exceeding and superseding the planar, the rectilinear, and the merely rational. What are we to make of it? Who knows?

What we can say is there's some talented work here, onstage and off. Brynna Bloomfield's scenic design calls up a 1950s sensibility but also evokes a timeless setting; this is a hotel room, but it's also a universe unto itself, watched over by a small galaxy of twinkling -- gently pulsating, really -- stars, courtesy of Scott Pinkney's lighting design. Dewey Dellay's sound design is, as usual, a standout; Megan F. Kinneen, as Properties Artisan, equips the room with a style that works for the production's particular vibe and tone.

"Insignificance" continues through February 9 at the Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, in Central Square, Cambridge. For tickets and more information, please visit CentralSquareTheater.org or call 617-576-9278