The grass is apparently always greener. Models want to act, actors want to direct, and chemists want to write plays. How else to explain the late-career change of Carl Djerassi, the much-lauded scientist who helped invent "the pill," and who has spent the last decade churning out novels and plays, including the stylistically intriguing Three on a Couch, currently making its domestic debut at the SoHo Playhouse.

The autobiographically themed work focuses on the consuming desire of a novelist (animated with TV announcer's tones by soap opera veteran Mark Pinter) to escape the professional box into which he has been painted. His plan is to fake suicide and publish a radically different sort[...]