Tesla's Letters (EST), Jeffrey Stanley's new drama set in Yugoslavia two years before the present Kosovo catastrophe, couldn't be more timely. Anything that furthers our understanding of that part of the world is preferable to the increasingly jingoistic reports dispatched by the Pentagon to CNN. But while the play doesn't touch directly on Milosevic's latest genocidal rampage or the compounding misery of NATO's bombing, it perceptively tells the story of a Balkan society so laden with a sense of victimization that it can no longer see its own murderous face.  

Daisy (Keira Naughton) arrives in Belgrade to conduct research for her dissertation on the life of famed Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla, whose experiments with electric current rivaled Edison's. Her access to archival material, however, is limited by Dragan (Victor Slezak), the museum curator, who requires that she first go to Croatia to document the damage done by the Croats to the landmark site of Tesla's childhood home. It's a setup to get the naive young woman to help spread the word of Croatian atrocities against Serbs. But the only reward she obtains for her service is an intimate knowledge of human evil, a discovery that shatters even the myth of Tesla's peace-loving past.  

While the plot steamrolls through complicated dramatic moments and the dialogue occasionally seems clunky, the writing offers historical depth and insight on a subject that defies simplified soundbites and media clichés. Director Curt Dempster's clean production features an impressively nuanced performance by Slezak as Daisy's grudge-bearing guide to the Slavic world. Naughton slightly overplays the self-possessed graduate student, though she vividly connects her character's ensuing identity crisis with the region's swamping chaos. — Charles Mcnulty