'Benedictus': Engaged in a Tense, but Wordy, Diplomatic Mission

The setup of "Benedictus" sounds as if it were concocted for one of those geopolitical thrillers you buy in an airport bookstore: On the eve of a threatened U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear installations, an Israeli arms dealer and an Iranian ayatollah meet secretly at a Benedictine monastery in Rome to try to stop the attack.

Although Motti Lerner's one-act play is too pedantic to qualify as a page-turner, it does have the advantages of being aptly byzantine and thematically offbeat. In the end, those who revel in back-channel diplomacy, or who like to curl up with the papers of the Council on Foreign Relations, are likely to be the happiest patrons of this sobering Theater J production.

Lerner, an Israeli dramatist who wrote the play in consultation with an artistic panel that included Iranian emigres, has a hankering for authentic-seeming, edge-of-apocalypse fantasy. In his more dramatically urgent "Pangs of the Messiah," for instance, he envisions a meltdown moment of the future, when a new Israeli treaty with the Palestinians has Israeli settlers taking up arms to block the dismantling by Israel of their West Bank settlement.

"Benedictus" moves the doomsday machinations to the Persian Gulf, where the United States is about to start a war over Iran's nuclear program. The showdown prompts a reform-minded Iranian cleric (Michael Kramer) to reconnect with a long-lost friend from revolutionary Tehran, a Persian Jew (Michael Tolaydo) who fled to Israel and became involved in the international arms trade.

Kramer's Ali Kermani wants Tolaydo's Asher Motahedeh to deliver a clandestine peace-plan proposal to his CIA contacts. Naturally, something's in the transaction for each of them: In return for helping Ali -- who is seeking to bolster an image as Iran's savior in a troubled campaign for the presidency -- Asher will be given permission to get his sister out of Tehran.

The issue is whether enough trust remains between them from their activist days against the shah, before Islamic revolutionaries persecuted them both, for the plan to move forward. A third participant in the proposed mission, a U.S. diplomat played by Conrad Feininger, had been one of the American Embassy hostages in Tehran. At regular intervals, each man steps forward to recite his account of the revolution. (Actually, imagining what Ali and Asher's friendship might have been like feels more dramatically alive than anything transpiring in "Benedictus.")

So much exposition must be theatrically downloaded in 75 minutes that the story doesn't have much chance to breathe. Iranian-born director Rahaleh Nassri keeps the proceedings on a lucid axis, even if the dependable Kramer, Tolaydo and Feininger seem stuck at times in a role-playing State Department exercise.

Benedictus, by Motti Lerner. Directed by Rahaleh Nassri. Set, David Ghatan; lighting, Martha Mountain; costumes, Lynly Saunders; sound, Matt Otto. With Richard Mancini. About 75 minutes. Through March 29 at Goldman Theater, D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. Visit http://www.theaterj.org or call 800-494-TIXS.