by Scott Collins
Who's afraid of "Tiny Alice"?
A better question: Who isn't?

Edward Albee's knotty, allegorical drama is rarely revived these days, and some archivists have even blamed it for smearing the rosy reputation the playwright enjoyed after "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" and other early successes. Upon its 1964 New York premiere, no fewer than six major critics blasted the play as incomprehensible.

"Tiny Alice" may never sit well with most theatergoers, but the beautifully acted, startlingly powerful new production by Chicago's Touchstone Theatre might end up forcing a critical reappraisal. Years from now, we may regard this as Albee's "Moby Dick" - - a masterpiece too long neglected because it lurched so far ahead of its time.

The script does not seem incomprehensible in performance now, especially when judged alongside early Harold Pinter, but neither does it seem, as the author has mulishly insisted, "quite clear," This is a frustrating text that demands very close attention. But like all the best works of art, it repays a rich dividend to those patient enough to make the investment.

The action, divided into three acts, is on one level so simple that it almost conforms to the patterns of myth. Young and beautiful Alice (Amanda Sullivan), the richest woman in the world, makes an extravagant cash contribution to the Roman Catholic Church n exchange for an unworldly lay priest named Julian (Paul Meyers). After an elaborate tease and consummated seduction, she abandons him to die in her mansion as a ritual sacrifice.

That sounds a little weird, a bit hallucinatory, but not hard to follow. What makes the play initially so confusing is its literariness -- its dense verbosity, dizzying wordplay, tangled metaphors and heavy Christian symbolism.

Those who wonder if the script might be a little too dryly intellectual for its own good have a point.

For example, Alice owns and displays a precise scale model of her mansion. albee baits us by making much of this replica but never adequately explaining its significance. Is it supposed to suggest the gulf between reality and appearances? Or maybe that we are all nothing more than toys in a doll house? It's hard to say. The model remains a tantalizing puzzle that the author, for whatever private reason, must feel is vital to the play.

And yet "Tiny Alice" -- at least in director Ina Marlowe's elegant, riveting, admirably lucid staging at the Theatre Building -- still packs quite a wallop. The closing moments of the second act, when poor tempted Julian buries himself in the curves of Alice's flesh, and of the third, when the mortally wounded priest slums n a mock Crucifixion pose, rival the end of Ibsen's "Ghosts" for raw dramatic power.

Sexy and provocative, "Tiny Alice" touches on a number of ideas -- decadence, spiritual decay, treachery, self-betrayal -- while pursing one great theme: the incompatibility of earthly erotic impulses with higher intimations of immortality.

Albee has extensively advised this production (and many others of his work), and he and Marlowe have assembled a cast of five top-notch, if little-known, actors. Sullivan, who's as gorgeous as a move star, brings some of Barbara Stanwyck's iciness to the role of Alice, and Meyers is wholly convincing as Julian, the entrapped innocent.

Sterling support comes from Alfred Wilson as Alice's venal lawyer and lover, Kendall Marlowe as the corrupt cardinal who turns his back on Julian's plight and the always interesting Larry Hart, as a cryptic butler who seems like a domestic from a Restoration comedy, as updated by Samuel Beckett.

Kevin Snow designed the handsome minimalist set (very tall, rotating wooden panels bordering the upstage area) and effective lighting, while excellent costumes are courtesy of Julie A. Nagel.

This "Tiny Alice" is a big, and welcome surprise.