'Bluebird': Tale of unhappy Londoners

It sounds like a line spoken by one of Conrad's old salts imagining a prehistoric London while gazing out at the Thames: "One time, long ago, there must have been a silence here." But spoken in a late-20th-century London taxi, the lament seems odd and quaint, especially considering the recent riots in Britain. Simon Stephens' 1998 drama

Bluebird

, having its U.S. premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company under Gaye Taylor Upchurch's direction and starring the celebrated British actor Simon Russell Beale, is moving but seems past its sell-by date.

Beale plays Jimmy, a cabdriver whose riders tell him bits and pieces of their histories. Bluebird's elliptical dialogue provides quick sketches of many characters, all desperately, profoundly unhappy. Occasionally details seem to link story to story, rider to rider. The set is similarly a quick sketch: an outdoor phone booth (remember them?), and the inside of the cab, evoked merely by chairs. The lighting ranges from dim to dimmer, spotlit as need be, contributing perfectly to the play's melancholic regret. Beale's ability to convey, with the slightest facial gesture, his reactions to what he hears from the backseat - shocked, ironic, worried, disgusted - creates a textured performance of great depth.

The first fare is a guy who tells Jimmy a series of lame jokes and relates a series of random and bizarre exchanges with strangers. He exits with a line that will be the slogan for the play - "I mean what does it all mean? Eh? What does it all mean? Do you have any idea what it all means? At all?" (This semi-obnoxious semi-drunk is played by Philadelphia's own Tobias Segal, who made his Broadway debut in The Miracle Worker last year after many acclaimed Off-Broadway appearances; you may remember his fine performance in Equus in 2002, for which he won a Barrymore.)

One rider after another enters and exits (all the cab's a stage). Among the most interesting are the nightclub bouncer (John Sharian) who spends his violent working life with people he despises, trying to be a good family man, and a posh banker type who runs up a huge bill by asking Jimmy to drive to the apartment building where his daughter was murdered so that he can sit and gaze at it. Michael Countryman conveys a sense of barely contained rage, pain, and self-loathing.

In a remarkably touching and funny performance, Kate Blumberg plays Janine, a neurotic former teacher who declares "everything's broken," adding, "You should get better air-conditioning; we can't cope."

Ultimately, we will learn that Jimmy was a novelist who stopped writing because he had "nothing left to say." The real reason for his silence will be revealed by the end of this 100-minute play, as he talks to his wife, Clare (Mary McCann), although the audience will figure out the crucial event of his story long before he tells us.

The cab Jimmy drives is a Bluebird (sold in the U.S. as a Nissan Stanza). The name - of car and play - suggests happiness, but this Bluebird - car and play - is about anything but.