NO DICE: EVERYDAY SALVATION

There is nothing like great theater.

And there is really nothing like great theater that hits you when you least expect it. That presents itself in such a unique and committed way that it makes you want to jump up onstage and share the joy.

And when you factor in that the great theater in question — No Dice from the New York-based Nature Theater of Oklahoma — is a four-hour experimental theater extravaganza — the enormity of the thrill becomes clear.

In the friendly confines of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, the astounding No Dice ensemble takes stylized acting and wildly energetic choreography to a place of high art.

The dialogue was crafted from countless hours of taped phone conversations between company members and their friends and family. The characters are foreigners — until they discard their accents and then their costumes and we realize what we suspected all along:

They aren't foreigners — they are us. And they are making a Herculean effort — using everyday conversations — to make sense of their lives and the world they share. Their interactions are by turns melodramatic, vaudevillian, touching and consistently hilarious.

Topics of dissection — um, discussion — include office work, Russian TV, drinking, dieting, novel punishments for scofflaw actors, Mel Gibson's Hamlet and dinner theater. All explored with non sequiturs, fits and starts and magnificently commited acting.

Then there's the dancing — which is as joyously uproarious as any I've ever witnessed on stage. (I admit, I do not possess a comprehensive mental library of dance numbers on stage but take my word for it.)

The theatrical experience of No Dice ultimately defies any written description. Like any great live experience — it needs to be seen, felt and heard.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the truly inspirational commitment by the actors — especially the astounding trio of Zachary Oberzan, Anne Gridley and Robert M. Johanson.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that my lovely, insightful and persistent wife, Lisa, was the driving force to see this show. See, I've been in and seen enough wacky-kooky-hey-look-at-us we're-super-different! experimental theater that I was leery of a four-hour sojourn — possibly into the heart of nutville.

No Dice is a show that restores faith in the power of live theater.

It is an example of what live theater should be.

I wanted to be up there with them.