A fanciful Meeting-of-the-Minds in a Manhattan hotel room in the mid-Fifties between (not all at once) Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joe McCarthy, identified in the script as just the Professor, the Actress, the Ballplayer, and the Senator. The promise of philosophical fireworks is largely unfulfilled, although the scene in which Marilyn Monroe explains the Theory of Relativity to its original author, with the aid of a Santa Claus sack of toys, is fulfilling in a way. (So, too, in another way, is the scene of DiMaggio's prideful account of the bubble-gum-card series in which he has been included, with some delightful poetic effects gotten from names like Tip Top, Hubley Bubbly's, and Baseball Bites.) With Nicolas Roeg as director, there was no need to worry that the thing would seem stagebound, and yet one of his prime anti-stage measures -- flashback glimpses (or sometimes flash-forward glimpses) of biographical turning points -- seems highly questionable on other grounds. Do we really need psychological insight into characters who are no more than pop icons? But the crippling liability here is rather Roeg's continued attachment to Theresa Russell, both off screen (where it is none of our business) and on (where it is). Everyone else in the cast -- Michael Emil in a Princeton letter-sweater, Tony Curtis in a sweat, Gary Busey in a beer gut -- is content to go after the spirit of the role; only Russell, in look-alike makeup and sound-alike voice, pursues the very letter. And for this the frowny actress, on whom the laws of gravity seem to weigh so heavily, is hopelessly ill-cast. Adapted by Terry Johnson from his own play. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd