'The Pride' explores being gay in the '50s and today

If you had been born 50 years earlier, would you still have been you? How much of you would have been determined by society's perceptions of what you see now as your real self? Would you even have noticed the pressure and - here's a big one - how much are you still shaped by it today?

In "The Pride," these questions are elevated from time-traveling pulp fiction to a real psycho-social and political mystery of recent history - that is, gay life in 1958 and 2008. The drama, which appropriately won British playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell a barrel of "most promising" awards in London, is engrossing and thoughtful, if a bit too clearly well meaning. Campbell writes with beauty and snap, but marks his Big Ideas with an obviousness that makes the play less provocative than it wishes to be.

Still, who wouldn't prefer too boldly underlined ideas to too few? Besides, the drama has been given a splendid American premiere, cast with four terrific British actors and staged by Joe Mantello, the New York director who made his fortune with "Wicked" and his reputation with such gripping dramas as "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Take Me Out."

Hugh Dancy, Ben Whishaw and Andrea Riseborough explore similar relationships in both very different eras. Characters keep their same names, but, since they never age beyond their mid-30s, they live in both periods. Toggling back and forth through time, they change clothes and attitudes in challenging - if occasionally confusing - ways on a deep stage of black lacquer and mirrors. (Hint: Look for Calvin on the underwear.)

Whishaw is extraordinary as the outsider able to accept his love for a married man in the oppressive '50s, only to grapple with the appeal of anonymous sex in freer times. Dancy seems a bit charismatic to be the repressed, provincial married man, though his reaction to the brutal medical "cure" is as poignant as it is primal. Riseborough is the empathetic wife, a gorgeously written character that gives identity to the women left alone by the denial of gay identity. And Adam James is scathing in four supporting roles. If the '50s scenes seem more compelling than today's, it matters that "pride" hadn't yet been turned into the name of a parade.

WHAT "The Pride"

WHERE Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., Manhattan

INFO $65-$95; 212-279-4200; mcctheater.org

BOTTOM LINE Well-meaning history, beautifully acted drama