Broadway Bound 

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While the Citizen-Caesar conflict is certainly intended to re-echo through the corridors of Wilson's succeeding pieces, the most bedazzling facets of Gem are the matriarchal Aunt Ester and the charismatic Solly Two Kings. If Ester heals Citizen's soul and cleanses his spirit, it's Solly who passes along the torch of a heroic mission.

Rashad certainly merits all the accolades she has received for the utterly unique Aunt Ester, but you're likely to be even more beguiled by the raspy-voiced Anthony Chisholm as the phlegmatic Solly. Wilson lovingly piles one colorful layer upon another in assembling the maverick's captivating life story. He has ranged from Alabama to Canada — as a slave, a Union scout, and a daredevil pilot who liberated scores of fugitive slaves with the Underground Railroad. Now at 67, bigger than life in an outré outfit that would do Long John Silver proud, Solly makes his living peddling dog-shit!

A truly wondrous evening.

Democracy (***1/4) — Michael Frayn's theater accomplishments are truly amazing. With his two previous signature works, Noises Off and Copenhagen, the playwright has ranged from backstage farce to nuclear fission and uncertainty theory. Now with Democracy he has veered off into high-stakes Cold War politics, spiced with the machinations of party infighting and the deviousness of embedded spies.

Yet there isn't a full act of honest-to-God stage dialogue in the three works put together! You probably remember the repetitious rehearsals and disastrous performance of Noises Off, sandwiched around an orgy of frantic backstage mime. Then came the multiple narrators of Copenhagen, the labyrinthine circular structure, and the endless replays of the conversation that might have occurred between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

As Günter Guillaume, the East German mole who penetrated Chancellor Willy Brandt's inner circle, venerated Brandt, and inadvertently caused his idol's downfall, Richard Thomas delivers more lines of narration than he would have read in voice-overs for a full season of The Waltons. Some of this narrative is pumped out to Arno Kretschmann, Günter's superior officer; some of it bestowed upon us — in huge chunks or in hasty asides in the middle of conversations.

Somehow, with Frayn's presentational wizardry and director Michael Blakemore's wily pacing, tension and interest are sustained. No fewer than 10 actors are sent scurrying across the two-story set amid electoral, diplomatic, and security crises — supplying additional levitation. When actual human dialogue takes place, Blakemore slows it to a crawl, keenly aware that we're parched for it, salivating over every word.

Thomas is perfection, energetic in his ordinariness, only mildly distressed that his place in history is parasitic. But the better you remember Willy Brandt, the more James Naughton will seem miscast in the role. Günter keeps telling us of Brandt's humble beginnings, his scrappy survival skills, and the silent eloquence of his simple gestures. Naughton radiates sophistication and urbanity, his visage is sculpted for Mount Rushmore, and the mellifluous rumble of his voice is instant oratory.

Still, Frayn's fascination with the phenomenology of history makes for compelling theater. I'm sure I would have savored it even more if I hadn't seen a similar formula at work in Copenhagen three times before.

Pacific Overtures (***) — East meets West in Sondheim's quaint, oddly proportioned musical ceremony with book by John Weidman. The culture clash is multifold. Sondheim's characteristic Sunday in the Park manner is wedded to delicate percussion-filled orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. Act 1's music-dominated development is flavored like a decorous folktale. Then Act 2's book-dominated continuation (only four of the 12 songs are here) turns to biting satire.

All the while, we're taking a stylized look at the westernization of Japan, beginning with Commodore Matthew Perry's mission to Japan. Nobody in the island kingdom had seen a steamship before, so Sondheim's "Four Black Dragons," describing the first impression made by Perry's fleet, has the ring of historic truth. The fearful Commodore, with true American brashness and arrogance, ratchets up the islanders' consternation by insisting on dealing only with the Emperor's highest emissaries. After all, he has brought a letter from President Millard Fillmore addressed to the Emperor — and the Commodore's mission is to open trade with Japan.

He means business. So do the nations of Europe when the ceremonious Japanese finally devise a way to greet a filthy foreigner on their soil without losing face. The pivotal moment in the show comes at the start of Act 2 after America negotiates its trade treaty. French, Dutch, Russians, and British (in the style of Gilbert & Sullivan) quickly cross the previously inviolable water that surrounds the stage.