ciful in his exploration this time around. Here we have Walker Dance, a man in his 40s whose world is turned upside down in 2001 by A) Sept. 11, and B) the arrival of his half-brother. B is even more cataclysmic than A. The two boys have gone in different directions since their teens. Walker has an upscale Brooklyn apartment, a beautiful wife, a somewhat sullen son, an exotic mistress, and an unhelpful
shrink. Brother Wylie, on the other hand, is an unreconstructed hippie whose prowess on the Internet bespeaks either total frivolousness or the ability to save the world. He's trying to develop software that will send the user through the looking glass into a virtual reality that will take him through his worst fears into the promised land of self-realization. Walker spends a lot of his time contemplating, and somewhat envying, the Sept. 11 terrorists. At least, he thinks, they could do something with their rage and frustration. He's stuck in a depressive spiral in which he can't commit to anything.
So enter, much to this production's benefit, Thomas Derrah as Wylie. Derrah's ability to get inside Wylie's irreverence and keep us guessing about the character's machinations and motives provides the spice of "Moomtaj." His Wylie is the kind of guy who reminds you what it was like to inhale, and then inhale some more, with or without "White Rabbit" playing in the background.
The interplay between American Repertory Theatre veteran Derrah and New York actor Robert Prescott as Walker is terrific, a classic Dionysian-Apollonian divide that the two actors pull off with such aplomb that it lifts the action into a special theatrical space, whether in Brooklyn or Moomtaj.
