Daydreaming

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

THE SNOW BALL

by A.R. Gurney

On the surface, this new "comedy with dancing" depicts the Sisyphean efforts of a handful of fiftyish, faded Wasps to revive the most glittering institution of their youth, a midwinter charity ball. A few of the daydreamers become fixated on reuniting the best dancers among them, a onetime romantic couple who were always outsiders in this prim upper-middle-class world: a girl who was much richer than the rest and a handsome "Irishman on the make" who was much poorer, Roman Catholic, and a blunt social climber. These two roles are double-cast to make the many flashbacks more vivid and to allow for an evocative reunion number, choreographed by Graciela Daniele, in which the two elders dance simultaneously in the present, in the past and, reaching across time, with their own younger selves.

Despite Jack O'Brien's adroit staging, the production at Boston's Huntington theater suffers from the uneven acting and imperfect casting that can give regional theater a bad name. But as always with Gurney, there is deep ambition beneath the whimsy and nostalgia. His real subject is middle-aged males' yearning for the lost premise that underlay social dancing: the assumption that the man would lead. The central character -- a drab real estate agent organizing the Snow Ball -- looks up at three memorable debutantes of his youth, again installed in the Snow Queen's sleigh. He labels them goddess, wife and mistress and ardently wishes he could have them all forever. In fact, none "belongs" to him. Men of Gurney's generation have lived in a radically evolving world, and many, he says, are still struggling to make peace with the changes.