“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” Oscar Wilde famously wrote in Lady Windermere’s Fan. The Irish authors of Improbable Frequency have put a twist on that quote from one of Ireland’s greatest writers. “We are all in the gutter,” goes the line in this 2004 play with music, “but some of us have an ear to the ground.”
The plot focuses on Tristram Faraday, an English crossword puzzle expert who’s been recruited by British intelligence to break enemy codes. His assignment is to decipher what appear to be secret messages broadcast by an Irish radio host. The Brits think the deejay is helping the Nazi air command plan attacks by selecting songs whose titles contain clues about the weather along the English coast. Posing as a London Times reporter, Faraday heads for Dublin, which has become a sort of Emerald Isle Casablanca. His research leads him to the strange conclusion that the radio messages don’t report on the weather—they actually influence it.
Hamman’s staging lacks the sexy burlesque outrageousness that I think Riordan intended, but it moves along swiftly with the help of a comically elaborate visual design by set designer Joanna Iwanicka and lighting designer Jordan Kardasz. What really grabbed me, though, was the inventive rendition of Bell Helicopter’s songs, which range in style from Irish pub ditties to thumping new-wave technorock. Musical director Mike Przygoda has crafted some of the most inventive band arrangements I’ve ever heard in an off-Loop theater—wonderful interplays between fiddle and flute, guitar and accordion, banjo and bass. With its witty wordplay and catchy music, Improbable Frequency is a diversion for the mind and a treat for the ears.
Through 3/31: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway, 866-811-4111, strawdog.org, $28.
