David Ives, the adapter of Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, may be earning guffaws on Broadway, and director Walter Bobbie may still be evoking pangs of wicked glee from his revival of Chicago, but with
New Jerusalem, now at Classic Stage Company, these artists deliver something darker and more serious: an engrossing historical drama based on the 1656 interrogation of philosopher Baruch de Spinoza that led to his excommunication from the Jewish faith and banishment from Amsterdam. While the outcome of New Jerusalem is a given, we don't stop hoping that the play might waver from the historical record.

In Bobbie's production, the audience is cast as the congregation, who sits and watches as Baruch [...]