E-Mail This Article to a Friend Virtual-dream play New Repertory Theatre journeys to Moomtaj BY SALLY CRAGIN

When the World Trade Center towers toppled, the response of artists was immediate. This Wednesday, New Repertory Theatre will premiere an unusual fantasy adventure by veteran playwright Michael Weller (Moonchildren, Loose Ends, Spoils of War) that uses the event as a starting but hardly an ending point.

Approaching Moomtaj: A Fairy Tale for Grownups focuses on a not-quite-fractured family, the Dances. Walker and Kelly are in the midst of a troubling interlude in their marriage. Making matters worse, Walker’s eccentric brother Wylie comes to stay, bringing with him an experimental computer game he’s invented that puts its human players into an alternate, pan-Eastern world called Moomtaj. Josh, the couple’s young son, is seduced by his uncle and the game, which has unusual effects on the persons who play it. Weller has constructed Approaching Moomtaj so that the audience sees the players, who eventually include the troubled Walker, leave real life to "enter" the game — and the fantastical world of Moomtaj.

"I think of it as a combination of genres," says New Rep artistic director Rick Lombardo, who’ll helm this production. "The whole Moomtaj world is just surrealism — an attempt to create a dream state. But the rest of the play is very, very realistic, which is the writing that Michael is known for." Staging a work that’s set partly in a fantasy world has presented some challenges, Lombardo acknowledges. "Walker, during this play, has Odysseus’s journey. Going through Hades, being seduced, having to battle giants. It’s the whole Joseph Campbell world." Lombardo and New Rep scenic designer Janie E. Howland came up with the idea of having minimal furniture and props but using monitors and a rear-projection screen to indicate place. "I thought, we have to borrow the technology that this is about."

And the inspiration for Moomtaj? Weller says it was a dream he had in the aftermath of September 11. One morning, he woke up and realized he’d been in the most amazing place, "an imaginary Arab land. The dream took me in the end to one of the most wonderful and serene experiences I ever had in a dream. And I didn’t do anything about it but thought, ‘How interesting that this is where my thoughts would go.’ " Moomtaj is a made-up name (though Weller found through Google that it’s "a congressman in India or the district he represents"). Still, the playwright has found it useful shorthand for some of the themes in the play, which have to do less with escaping one’s present life than with learning to live with a more enlightened consciousness. "I read an article about a study that indicated that people who live in low-income public housing in a neighborhood surrounding by buildings that are abandoned have a much higher rate of respiratory illness than people who live in a neighborhood where buildings are occupied. So what happens in the surroundings of your life filters into you in ways that are curious."

Weller came to New Rep, he says, because he "wanted to work with companies that are hungry and growing." And for the cast, working with the architect of this surreal, engineered world has helped facilitate an understanding of it. "I like the play a whole lot," says Thomas Derrah, the award-winning American Repertory Theatre actor New Rep has imported to play Wylie. "It’s complex and funny and touching. It’s about that search for whatever heals us, whether it’s power or glory or happiness or peace or revenge. This program is designed to debug people."

Approaching Moomtaj is presented by New Repertory Theatre, 54 Lincoln Street in Newton Highlands, September 15 through October 17. Tickets are $28 to $48; call (617) 332-1646, or visit www.newrep.org