SFGate.com, August 1, 2006

Still a "Dream"

-- By Robert Hurwitt

One of last year's most exhilarating shows is one of this summer's don't-miss opportunities. Adam Bock's "The Typographer's Dream" reopened Saturday at Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage in the same brilliant Encore Theatre Company production under Anne Kauffman's expertly paced direction. It isn't as unexpected a treat as it was before, but it's every bit as smart, hilarious and thoroughly entertaining.

It's a panel discussion that quickly evolves into provocative, psychologically revealing, intellectually stimulating and very funny theater. The panelists -- all reprising their original roles in deceptively everyday, beautifully developed performances -- are a typographer (Aimée Guillot), a geographer (Jamie Jones) and a stenographer (Michael Shipley), or, he maintains, really a court recorder.

Bock's savvy script and the terrific cast bring these esoteric trades to life, wittily depicting their unnoticed social importance. Almost imperceptibly, the characters emerge as fully formed figures, their shared backstory evolving from glances to explosive, curiously penetrating revelations about the recording of facts, how type can lie and the importance of knowing one's boundaries.

E-mail Robert Hurwitt at rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com

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