Scrambled Eggheads

Action begins when a stumbling, naive
researcher from Illinois, William Shumway (Tony Roach), finds himself
with a microphone in his hands at a learned meeting. A scheduled
lecturer of Flemish poetry did not show up, and so Shumway gets his
chance. Without using any technical jargon, he explains that he has
indeed hit upon the cure for cancer. Inarticulateness and obscurity did
not hold him back. He quickly attracts the attention of a hard-driving
administrator, Robert Brock (Greg Bostwick), of a giant East Coast
research center named Hill-Matthieson Institute, which not
coincidentally has the same number of syllables as Sloan-Kettering. To
Brock, Shumway is a “beachfront property,” who should be given
everything he wants.

Once ensconced, Shumway gets to work
rapidly and produces exciting results. Specifics must be kept secret, a
partial explanation of the title. In some brilliantly clear,
color-coded projections, Shumway explains how the cancerous growths
appear and how they are beaten back. Scenic artist Apollo Weaver
deserves special applause for these concoctions, which are expanded by
projectionist Bill Clarke. Scenic designer Kent Goetz has turned the
cancer slides into the floor decoration and the wall behind the action
so that we never forget what the demanding tedium of laboratory
research can be, no matter what fun and fireworks are taking place in
front of us.

While details may be secret, the general
news is bound to get out and reaches to the shores of the Charles River
where ambitious 21-year-old Harvard undergraduate Alice Curiton (Kelly
Galvin) catches the fever. She rushes to Hill-Matthieson and storms
into Brock’s office, pleading to be made Shumway’s assistant. It will
cost H-M nothing as she is already on a grant she can take with her.
Ms. Curiton (characters are conventionally known by their family names)
talks a mile a minute, and so we don’t immediately notice that she has
lied to get into Brock’s office, pretending to have an appointment.
This ruse does not trouble Brock, a consummate and cheerful liar
himself, who says she talks like “a thousand poodles barking all at
once.” For experienced playgoers, however, all this deceit is an
inescapable portent.

Curiton’s youth adds another level of
tension about just when in life anyone, especially a scientist, can
make that lightning strike. She sneers at old-timers over 50, which we
find is Brock’s age. Worse, Brock has twice come close to being
Nobel-worthy, but that was years back. His consolation now is power, as
he explains: “What happens to a scientist if he doesn’t have an
original thought? He becomes department chair.”

This leads to the fourth character in
the drama, Saul Roth (Roy Clary), the chief of surgery, who—constantly
reminding us he is 67—sounds like a figure in a Philip Roth novel.
Learning that Shumway was originally from Minnesota, Roth asks if the
young man knows the Epsteins, who live in Wisconsin, probably the
nearest Jews. His anecdotes always begin with quotations from his uncle
Milt. 

As Brock’s ambitions extend to the whole
of the institute, and thus his management, he wants to push Roth out of
the way and humiliates him with reduced assignments and inferior work
space. Playwright Clyman gives us every reason to expect more from Roth
because he is the master of witty paradoxes: “Nobody goes there to say
anything. We just talk.” Of course he means that nobody makes an
important announcement there, but the wordplay is enough to let us know
Roth can draw on unseen reserves of power.

Missing thus far are Secret Order’s
two greatest assets, characterization and language. Each one of
Clyman’s characters is richer and more unpredictable than this summary
has implied. The youthful Shumway is far more complex than that
familiar figure in American literature, the honest, heroic rube, like
Jimmy Stewart’s Jefferson Smith. 

When Curiton offers a discreet sexual
encounter, he refuses, not because he finds her undesirable but because
he does not want to take advantage of a student—and so asks for a rain
check. He is also an unashamed believer in a world of secularists, and
is filled with wonder at the unexplained mysteries of nature, like the
contrasting ways that coffee and cream will swirl in two different
cups. Brock, Roth and Curiton do not remain what they seem at
introduction but follow through on subtle hints Clyman has given us
about them.

Importantly, also, Secret Order is
often knock-down hilarious. This puts it way ahead of
comparable-sounding dramas about the intellectual life and ethical
choices, Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and David Auburn’s Proof. Clyman
writes comic dialogue instead of gags, and so the spark does not
translate well from the stage to the page. But consider Roth’s swoon,
“A fresh warm loaf of bread is the closest we’ll get to seeing the face
of God.” 

Instead, Clyman’s wit serves to define
relationships. Many of the best go to Brock, the character the author
clearly dislikes the most, just as Tony Kushner gave the best lines to
Roy Cohn in Angels in America. The hyper-aggressive
Curiton boasts that she’s from Harvard. An unmoved Brock answers, “Yes
{remembering that he’s heard of it}, near Boston.”

Director Rachel Lampert exacts perfect
timing from a professional cast dominated by newcomers. Tony Roach’s
Shumway is the most necessary performance, shy and awkward but
resolved. As a character who has difficulty getting across what he
feels, Roach always shows that Shumway knows and feels more than he
says. Kelly Galvin’s Curiton and Roy Clary’s Roth are also rich in
subtext, their portrayals sending us even better signals of coming
turns than the hints buried in the text. Company regular Greg Bostwick
can do no wrong, even when he delivers a smiling incarnation of
Satan—but a Satan who carries his own private wounds.

Bob Clyman’s Secret Order suffers only from a clunky, misleading title. In all other respects it’s a feast, better than a warm loaf of bread.

This production runs through Sept. 20. See Times Table for information.