It feels stylized as it asserts itself as being different from the movie, which really only serves to reinforce the iconic power of Kelly's Darko. As a result, the play, as it leaves the gate, feels shrill ... ramped up in a way that undermines the drama. Yeah, it may not seem fair on the surface to compare a play with a movie in this way, but the kind of acting and delivery of which I speak can apply to both film and stage.

This shrill hamstringing of the drama is a pretty big and clunky problem, in that Donnie Darko, on stage and screen, is a story of looming apocalypse. "Shrill" kinda clashes with the feeling of "doom" that Donnie Darko needs. The ludicrousness of a soothsaying bunny rabbit named Frank can only be counterpointed by that bunny saying some seriously heavy sooths. Even those unfamiliar with Kelly's movie can sense that the narrative they're watching onstage is sped up, as if it's a Reader's Digest version.

But when Donnie Darko, as a stage play, comes into its own, asserts itself as a work of live theater and steps out from under the shadow of Kelly's movie, the results are taser-to-the-forehead electric. The mercilessly telescoped feeling of the narrative and acting style is made up for by the gutsy use of the theater space. Everything clicks, and Stern's direction, the delivery of the actors and the wormhole-like crushing of a story that takes place over Donnie's entire town (in his living room, his school, the local theater, his shrink's office, the vacant lot, the local golf course, etc.) onto a single stage serves to amp the dramatic exit wound of the story.

All the (mad) world's a stage

Stern takes Kelly's story, originally told in 2-D moving images, and pulls it kicking and screaming into 3-D. This Donnie Darko punches into the theater space and fills it in a way that no movie could. Opposite sides of the stage are used simultaneously, messing with space and time within the narrative, and also within Donnie's time-travel-addled mind. Donnie's thoughts and the visions revealed to him by Frank the Bunny are presented onstage by the use of balconies, by the use doorways that open and close by themselves and by the very creepy use of two-way mirrors. Stern seems to take to heart Bertolt Brecht's dictum that you gotta make the audience participate in the watching of a play by making them aware of its artificiality; the audience in the theater are twice drafted into being an audience within the play's narrative. It's audience participation done by surging the play up into where the audience sits.

Donnie Darko is a story about a kid's broken mind and broken reality. Stern's use of the theater space in these ways isn't a clever post-modern stunt. It serves the purpose of cracking that kid's mind and his reality onstage.

While the stage production does its best to project the kind of 1980s zeitgeist that's crucial to the story (there's great use of sound at a particular moment that'll flood the minds of 1980s survivors with uncomfortably kitschy memories), it still falls a little short on that count. But that shortcoming is more than made up for by some pretty great performances. The play works best when it diverges from the movie—there's an amazing moment when Cherita, she of the earmuffs and the crush on Donnie, kind of becomes a Greek chorus for the play through her "Autumn Angel" dance routine, put on for the school talent show.

The question arises, and it's a big question—What the heck will someone who hasn't seen the movie Donnie Darko think about the play? How does it work as a play in and of itself? That's a tough one. This is not to say that the Halloween-night audience I sat with was rude, but I could swear I heard a few people around me mouthing their favorite lines from the movie along with the actors, and also softly singing along under their breath with Gary Jules' cover of "Mad World," which backbones the ending of Donnie. I think they just couldn't help it. But it sure as heck shows that they knew the source material. It could be that somebody who hasn't seen the movie will experience it as some kind of over-the-top expressionistic work—falling jet engines, wormholes, giant skull-faced bunnies, 100-year-old physicist nuns and the magic that is Sparkle Motion can be kind of overwhelming for somebody who isn't expecting them in a live theater performance. It could be that a Darko virgin will have a better experience of the play than a Darko fan.