PTC's Franklin Unplugged

Ben Franklin Unplugged. One-man show written and performed by Josh Kornbluth, directed by David Dower. Jan. 11-21, 2006, at Philadelphia Theatre Co., 1714 Delancey St., 215-985-0420. www.phillytheatreco.com.

What begins as yet another superficial neurotic Jewish standup comedy routine imperceptibly evolves into a profound tour de force that brilliantly and hilariously discerns common ground between 21st-Century audiences and Ben Franklin’s 18th-Century psyche. Josh Kornbluth portrays himself as a frantic California-based monologuist who, having fancied himself a Franklin look-alike, travels East and discovers, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his socialist roots, an unexpected bond between the “first American” and Kornbluth’s “un-American” family. Although Kornbluth self-deprecatingly insists at one point that “There’s no internal tension in my work,” rarely have the intangible processes of research and self-discovery been rendered so dramatically and delightfully involving. An added bonus is Kornbluth’s charming evocation of the real-life Franklin scholar Claude-Anne Lopez; every cloistered academician should be so fortunate as to be acknowledged by such a witty and perceptive performer as Kornbluth. That goes for Franklin himself, whose essence Kornbluth seems to have grasped better in one night at the Yale archives than many intellectuals manage in a lifetime.—DAN ROTTENBERG