THEATER REVIEW (excerpts)
"PENTECOST"

Connecting the Politics of Art and Nationalism

By PHOEBE HOBAN

The Barrow Group's inaugural production in its new 99-seat theater on West 36th Street couldn't be much more ambitious: the New York premiere of "Pentecost," a 1994 drama by the British playwright David Edgar. Written in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the play tackles everything from the origin of Western Renaissance art (could an Arab genius have painted a Giotto-like fresco 100 years before Giotto?) to America's pop-cultural hegemony to hostage negotiations -- if not the Stockholm syndrome.

The play starts with a cultural bang. The curator (portrayed by Oksana Lada) of the national museum in the unnamed country invites a young British art historian (Marc Aden Gray) to the broken-down church to reveal a fresco she believes might predate Giotto, making it, as the historian soon puts it, "the starting pistol for the next 600 years."

But Mr. Edgar ("The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby") has bigger fish to fry than merely overturning the history of Western art. The culture clash he sets up -- between East and West, church and state, restorationists and conservationists and, finally, between a pack of political asylum seekers and their hostages -- contains enough material (and languages, including Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish and Sinhalese) for half a dozen plays.

The fast-paced, heady banter in the initial setup is confident and clever, even as Mr. Edgar leads the audience deeper into such cultural conundrums as whether a work of art like the Sistine Chapel should be left alone or restored to its former glory, and if the best place for the fresco, whatever its true provenance, is in the church or as a traveling blockbuster,

Just as this round of rapid-fire ideas has begun to simmer, Mr. Edgar suddenly ups the ante. Before the first act ends, the art historical battle (with the origin of the fresco now seriously in doubt) becomes a hostage situation, and the play is on to its next big agenda: can the community of man ultimately transcend national borders?

A ragtag group of political asylum seekers, including a Sri Lankan, a pair of Bosnian Gypsies, an Afghan, a Kurd and a Mozambican, led by a furious Palestinian (well played by Alysia Reiner), take over the church, and we're abruptly switched from a PBS program to CNN.

Despite its nearly three-hour length, "Pentecost" is never boring. The writing is engaging and the staging (with a side door opening to admit everyone from a fast-talking cultural minister to a naked priest) keeps things moving. It's too bad, though, that Mr. Edgar didn't just stick with revolutionizing art history rather than trying to revolutionize the world.