THEATER REVIEW By BRUCE WEBER On May 21, 1946, Louis Slotin, a physicist working on the bomb development in a secret laboratory near Los Alamos, N.M., was demonstrating a procedure known as a crit test. The test was meant to verify that the plutonium core of an atomic bomb had the right size and heft — the critical mass — to sustain the chain reaction among atomic particles that would cause an explosion. Performing the test was risky; Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, referred to it as "tickling the dragon's tail." But Slotin (pronounced SLOE-tin) had done it so many times, often pushing the limits of safety to attain better data. This time, however, his hand slipped at a crucial moment, the core "went critical," and Slotin was zapped with a dose of radiation that killed him after nine days of increasing agony. The other men in the room were also exposed, but they survived, largely because Slotin absorbed most of the radiation. Some thought him a hero. This is the story that inspired "Louis Slotin Sonata," a play by Paul Mullin at the Ensemble Studio Theater, and as a historical episode suitable for dramatizing, you can't do much better. The lead production of First Light, the theater's laudable annual festival of science-themed plays, it has a singular and terrible event that is grotesquely compelling in its own right but has natural resonance beyond itself. And it has a sympathetic protagonist of intellect, wit and fatal hubris. The play is at its best when it is telling its central story: a good man doomed by his own hand, the tormenting experience of his final days and its emotional repercussions among those around him. Sticking close to historical fact and incorporating medical reports and other documents into his text, Mr. Mullin has fashioned a crafty narrative propelled by the secondary characters: other scientists, doctors, a nurse and Slotin's father. They pass the story line around like instrumentalists sharing an orchestral theme, and as directed by David P. Moore, the pace is vivace. (Musical metaphor notwithstanding, the claim of the title and the playwright — that the play's structure is based on classical sonata form — is irrelevant and pretentious.) Bill Salyers plays Slotin with an insightful sense that in a desperate situation a scientist's instinct is to reason desperately. And though he overstates the character's glibness, Mr. Salyers makes Slotin's plight irresistibly gripping as he waits for the end never knowing what's going to be visited on him next. Two other performances are worth singling out: Allyn Burrows as Slotin's colleague and friend Philip Morrison and Joel Rooks as Israel Slotin, an observant Jew who, in the play's most wrenching scene, is asked by Morrison to authorize an autopsy on his son, a practice in violation of Jewish law. Unfortunately Mr. Mullin has grander ambitions for his play than the mere telling of an important story. Early on he introduces the "big" philosophical issues that generally accompany the literature of quantum physics and nuclear holocaust. But as with the title, there's something show-offy and distracting about it. Several historical figures make appearances to animate Slotin's ruminations: "God does not play dice with the universe," Albert Einstein says; "I am become death, shatterer of worlds," Robert Oppenheimer says, quoting the Bhagavad Gita as he did after the first atomic explosion. And God himself shows up, dressed in a period pinstripe suit and a fedora, the image of Harry S. Truman. More bravely and originally, Mr. Mullin has also contrived to personify the cruel Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. The purpose is to compare Mengele's experiments to the Los Alamos scientists' frenzied work on a weapon of mass destruction. As Mengele himself declares here, "What took us years to do in stinking, filth- filled camps can now, they say, be done in milliseconds from the comfort of an airplane cockpit." This tilts the show toward a condemnation of nuclear weapons research. But the problem is that Mr. Mullin's argument — that if God doesn't gamble with the universe, man lamentably does — is rendered thinly here. It feels motivated more by theatricality than drama, especially when Mengele (Mr. Salyers) leads the show's weirdest sequence, a parody of a vaudeville chorus line, with scientists singing doggerel about thermodynamics. Like a lot of the elements in the play, the scene is ornamental and distracting, presented by the playwright not because he should but because he can. In stage terms, that's playing dice with the universe. LOUIS SLOTIN SONATA By Paul Mullin; directed by David P. Moore; sets by Rachel Hauck; lighting by Greg MacPherson; costumes by Amela Baksic; sound by Rob Gould; stage manger, James W. Carringer; assistant stage manager/design assistant, Pippa Allen; associate producer, Sarah Elkashef; props and wardrobe, Petol Weekes; choreographer, Kathryn Gayner; assistant director, Melanie S. Armer; production manager, Timothy L. Gallagher; technical director, Carlo Adinolfi. Presented by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ensemble Studio Theater, Curt Dempster, artistic director; Jamie Richards, executive producer; Eliza Beckwith, managing director; Chris Smith, program director, E.S.T./Sloan Project; J. Holtham, associate program director, E.S.T./Sloan Project. At 549 West 52nd Street, second floor, Clinton. WITH: Bill Salyers, Ezra Knight, Bill Cwikowski, Joel Rooks, Allyn Burrows, Matthew Lawler, Richmond Hoxie and Amy Love. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company