A PROBABLE HIT

Improbable Frequency, a surreal musical tale of spies, physics and radio waves, is currently making its U.S. premiere at 59E59 Theaters. At the helm of this award-winning production is Lynne Parker, the co-founder and artistic director of Dublin, Ireland"s Rough Magic Theatre Company. Parker stormed the Dublin and Edinburgh Festivals with this World War II satire set in Ireland, racking up awards and invitations to tour with her dynamic company. With the New York production underway, Parker is tackling a fresh challenge of sorts. Following is an edited excerpt from a recent conversation with Parker. Q: Could you briefly sum up this tale of exiled intellectuals, literary bar lizards, British spies and Nazi sympathizers? A: The play is a fantasia about a young cryptographer in England who is sent to Dublin. He applies for a job in the Secret Service in order to decode and to investigate certain messages that they believe are being sent to Nazi Germany from the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, via Broadcast Radio Erin. This turns out to be a total red herring. But the author is playing with ideas of history, literature and nuclear physics, and making all of this into a very, very funny and entertaining piece. It works on a fantastical and very witty level. It"s comedic and totally surreal. Q: One London critic compared Improbable Frequency to Tom Stoppard"s Travesties. Are there similarities? A: I suppose's in the way thatˆ  Travesties takes a kind of footnote to history and weaves a very fictional and enjoyable entertainment around it. It"s also linguistically very clever. Q: Is the original cast in the New York production? A: It"s nearly the original cast, with two changes. One of the enjoyable things about Improbable Frequency is that it is very much an ensemble piece. There are six actors, but the six of them pass through a huge number of roles. It"s a very high-octane piece of theater. Q: You"ve toured Ireland, England and Scotland with this production. What do you think makes this piece so appealing to audiences? A: It"s a kind of love affair. You can"t live with them, can"t live without them. That feeling still exists between the English and the Irish. They are two nations that have a very linked and integral history but have had an uneasy relationship because of the difference in power between the two. And that speaks to many different nations and different conjunctions of nations. And it"s also about how we"re always getting each other wrong. How language itself can trip us up. Somebody has talked about how America and Britain are two nations divided by a common language. In a way, that is what the English and the Irish are. -- Improbable Frequency at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St. (betw. Park and Madison aves.) Through Jan. 4 For tickets, call Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or visit [www.ticketcentral.com](http://www.ticketcentral.com) --