Sometimes one doesn't know what he's missed until he suddenly encounters it again -- which is that happens during the McCarter Theatre's excellent revival of Lanford Wilson's
Talley's Folly. The production's glow isn't just due to Phil Monet's evening -- evoking lighting by a steadily rising moon as it beams on John Lee Beatty's frilly notion of a capacious but fallen-into-disuse gazebo down by a Missouri river -- but the reunion of Wilson and his longtime collaborator, director Marshall W. Mason. Together, they always had -- and, given the evidence here, still retain -- a line on how to forge grittily-charming and charmingly-gritty views of particular people in particular places.

That ta[...]