Trivial Pursuits, Visions & Voices Theatre Company, at the Athenaeum Theatre. A number of potentially intriguing elements fail to jell in this drama by Chicago playwright Brian Alan Hill, artistic director of this new ensemble. Crammed with many hints but few discoveries, it focuses on Byrne Dante (Christopher Carrier), a master physicist who’s become a modern-day Robinson Crusoe cut off in his book-laden apartment with a childlike Friday (the comically deft E. Vincent Teninty). As they play Trivial Pursuit or watch their three televisions, Byrne tries to forget his God-defying role in creating an “infinity equation,” the key to a unified-field theory that may have yielded a doomsday weapon that consumed millions of lives. When Byrne escapes, with the unwitting help of grocery delivery girl Camille (Jill Monaco, sounding like a public service announcement), it means absolutely nothing.
