Performing Arts

PLANO – In dramatic terms, a reversal is when the playwright springs a surprise on the audience. A character's fortunes may change suddenly, or something entirely unanticipated may happen.

Steven Dietz's Private Eyes has more reversals than you can count, especially in the first act. Just as we think we know what's going on, the playwright pulls the rug out from under us. It actually gets tiresome after awhile. Too much of a good thing in this case makes you feel queasy, like a series of earthquakes that causes you to lose faith that there's any such thing as solid ground.

Rover Dramawerks is performing the play in the Cox Building Playhouse in Plano. Mr. Dietz, a playwright of national reputation who recently moved to Austin to teach at the University of Texas, came up for Saturday's matinee and stayed to talk to the audience afterward. He confessed that in the years since he had last seen a production, he had forgotten a few turns of the plot – not hard to imagine, since there are so many.

It's difficult to make even the simplest of plot summaries without giving away two or three of Mr. Dietz's surprises at a bare minimum.

Let's reveal as little as possible: Rick Dalton and Julie Reinagel are cast as a married couple acting in a play. Michael Sturlin plays their director. The other, rather mysterious, woman role is usually performed by Cat Hundley, but stage manager Joslyn Justus filled in on Saturday. Frank Shirar plays a psychologist that a character consults.

The intricate first act may or may not be a play within a play. The second concentrates more intensely on the three main characters and their emotional entanglements. That's something of a relief after the roller coaster ride of the first act, but the shift is also a bit disconcerting.

Lisa Devine, an experienced director and theater professor, makes her Dallas debut with Private Eyes. The women in her cast proved stronger than the men – even Ms. Justus, stylish as she substituted in a role that's little more than a series of jokes. Ms. Reinagel managed best helping the audience sort out the various levels of the plot. She actually managed to be heartbreaking in the final, momentarily sincere and realistic scene.

•Through Feb. 10 at the Cox Building, 1517 Ave. H, Plano. Runs 135 mins. $13 to $16. 972-849-0358, www.roverdramawerks.com.