photo by Hugo Glendinning

If it proves nothing else, the jazzed-up-gussied-up revival of Tom Stoppard's 1972 "Jumpers," proves you don't have to fly to London to get a metaphysically-induced migraine. And if the voyage of director David Leveaux's Littleton production (with its fine cast intact) to Broadway confirms for the second time how irrefutably conflicted and convoluted is this absurdist comedy by an otherwise staggeringly smart playwright, so be it. In one season, the gifted Leveaux has taken us from "Fiddler on the Roof," to "Singer on the Moon." So who's howling? Consider "Jumpers" the Brits' obligatory snob appeal entry at Tony time. Far be it from me to object to either Stoppard's too-clever-by-far vision of how philosophical orthodoxy is demeaned, if not actually condemned, within a radically re-imagined academic society, or to reject the way he chooses to integrate a randy romance and a vicious murder within the perimeters of mind-bending chatter and cockeyed melodramatics.

Once we see through the extravagant trappings provided by set designer Vicki Mortimer, our attention focuses on the blissfully postulating philosopher George Moore (Simon Russell Beale) as he composes a lecture on the nature of God and his stand regarding moral absolutes. At the same time it becomes evident in Leveaux's busily abstracted staging that George's social inadequacies are as problematic as is his marital ineptitude, a reality substantiated by George's friend Archie (Nicky Henson), the unctuous and devious vice-chancellor whose flagrant and conspicuous attentions paid to George's glamorous wife Dorothy (Essie Davis) provide for some goofy compromising situations.

Except for the muted laughter provoked by Nicholas Woodeson, as an incompetent cop, and Eliza Lumley, as an almost silent secretary, there is no need to speculate whether or not the peripheral characters that Stoppard has conjured up resemble human beings any more than they resemble an extended family of cerebrally gifted circus performers, posturing and playing out their devilishly comic skits in their respective rings. These philosophers/academics, presumably theorists of radical positivism, are specifically perceived and deployed as a troupe of acrobats of questionable distinction, but we do like their yellow jumpsuits.

Given that the audience is unwittingly made a recipient of George's mildly diverting discourses, it remains for the endearingly chubby and chatty Mr. Beale to posit George's moral philosophy. Beale does this as brilliantly as he illuminates his character's own personal failures and frustrations. The actor, who is making his Broadway debut and most recently played Hamlet at BAM, does it in a well worn cardigan with a little sweat and no end of theatrical panache. This helps us to survive all the stuff and the stuffing that appears with regularity on over-worked turntables and sometimes from the moon.

George appears to be as patronized by his fellow philosophers as he is by his dotty Dorothy (Essie Davis), a former singer famous for warbling aloft on a crescent moon, the victim of a nervous breakdown presumably caused by the moon landings that have made her moon-June repertoire obsolete. As Dorothy, Davis is appropriately distracted, dreamy and never less than stunning (in and out of Nicky Gillibrand's insinuating costumes.) Dorothy's disintegrating relationship with George may suggest an occasional wistful hint of lost affection but it never goes beyond the ineffectual. One has to admire the way Leveaux gives equal value to Stoppard's mix of melancholy and mirth, especially the way in which the almost irrelevant murder of a philosopher, mostly played out within Dorothy's bedroom, counters the play's respect for moral urgency.

As an entertainment, "Jumpers" would have us be as content with its dizzyingly giddy speechifying as with its twisted sense of playfulness. A collective audience breakdown during a performance, similar to Dorothy's, would not be out of the question. Given that this sumptuous production that seems to take place in star-glittering outer space boasts an on-stage band, a mentally unbalanced chanteuse atop a Ziegfeldian moon, and a corps of tenacious acrobats, a trained (?) tortoise, a striptease, and a murder most foul, " Jumpers" is not wanting for window dressing. It does go wanting, however, for coherence and whatever else it takes to keep an audience in its spell.

Although the relentlessly wordy and fitfully wacky "Jumpers" is erudite to a fault, it comes up short behind Stoppard's more recent plays such as the vastly more accessible but also mentally stimulating " Arcadia," "Hapgood," "The Real Thing," and "The Invention of Love," not to mention his most dazzlingly precocious " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern."

Lest a reviewer feels insufficiently prepared for the test, a half-inch stack of feature stories and London reviews were provided by the production's press representative. My instinct (and my decision) to wait and read them until after I wrote my own reaction comes not from ego or vanity, but because I suspect that audience members will not be given the same heads-up. I chose to be as objectively open, respectful and receptive to the play as they may be. The result: I was occasionally bored, often perturbed, and sometimes amused, but primarily confounded.

"Jumpers" (through July 14)

Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47^th Street

For tickets ($60 - $95) call 212 – 307 - 4100