What I knew about Louise Nevelson you could fit on a pin. There is a wall of hers at the Lincoln Center. She wore fake eyelashes and flamboyant clothes. She is dead. And, frankly, I had no interest in knowing any more than that. After seeing this exquisite play, I know she was a tough babe, a passionate creature, a lousy mother, and a driven artist, that she put "Occupant" on her door during a hospital visit, and that once when she was a little girl, she saw a black horse running free. It was in this moment Nevelson became a chrysalis. The horse's freedom brought her to rapture and broke her heart in the same second for she knew that no matter how fast she ran, she would never catch up to it.

Nevelson emigrated from Russia to Maine. To Maine? There were Jews in Maine? Who knew? She got out pretty fast because she knew she had to. Her real self was waiting to be found. The ticket out was marriage, not to the guy she wanted, but to his brother. More importantly, she was on a mission to become herself, and that was not going to happen in Maine. It happened in New York, and it didn't happen all at once. It took decades of doing.

There is something charming about this piece. Unlike a lot of Albee pieces, this one doesn't set out on a trail of secret ambushes - unless you count an interview with a dead person an ambush. It also travels the very difficult path of making entertainment out of history. This is difficult because history is a form of reality, and reality does not often provide us with a dramatic arc. Neither does this play, unless you count Nevelson herself.

In this play, you get to go along for the ride because the fabulous work by Larry Bryggman (the Man) and Mercedes Ruehl (Louise Nevelson) takes you there. I was particularly drawn to Bryggman, who I have seen in many plays and whose work has always left me cold. He appears as though he was waiting for the curtain call so he could leave the theatre and go be charming somewhere.