Whimsy, love, longing caped in a brogue

Just to get your bearings, you might want to think of "The Wooden Breeks" -- Glen Berger's altogether whimsical and verbally intoxicated play -- as a variation on "Brigadoon." But it's a "Brigadoon" as might be reimagined by such cross-century literary aces as Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Dave Eggers.

Sound a bit mind-boggling? Well, it is. Yet in its Chicago premiere Monday at the Lookingglass Theatre, this impossibly brainy, altogether quirky, simultaneously heartfelt and satirical examination of mortality -- and everything that precedes "the grand finale" -- turns out to be perfectly comprehensible and more than a little enchanting. (It would be twice as enchanting, however, were it half as long.)

Berger is a storyteller with all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, all of them designed to wreak havoc with the mountain of literary and theatrical conceits that have piled up over the years -- from the woman who drives men mad to the isolated scholar holed up in an ivory tower, from the hapless urchin who can break your heart (or get on your nerves) to the quest that never quite ends, or at least depends on an elusive code to unlock a crucial secret.

So here's the story: In the rain-sodden and impoverished coastal hamlet of Brood, where everyone sounds fully Scottish and all are half-mad and half-crocked, a tinker (Philip R. Smith) grieves over the beautiful and elusive wife-lover, Hetty Griggs/Anna Livia Spoon (Louise Lamson), who abandoned him many years earlier.

The other inhabitants of Brood have problems, too: A widow (Eva Barr) grieves for her dead daughter; a vicar (Raymond Fox) lusts for the widow; a laundress (Marika Mashburn) realizes her painter boyfriend (Brendan Donaldson) is infatuated with a mysterious beauty (yes, Lamson); the crazy, kilted undertaker (Troy West) is hot for the same beauty, as is the scholar long out of touch with reality (Andrew White). And then there's the lonely, homeless bastard child (the quite remarkable Abigail Droeger), left behind by Hetty.

Under Heidi Stillman's spirited direction, the living, as well as those who dwell six feet under, dance their melancholy dance of desire and loss. And designer Brian Sidney Bembridge's stone-and-peat set and stormy lighting, plus Mara Blumenfeld's splendiferous costumes, are the stuff of magic spells and fairy tales.