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Pure Theatre opened the stunningly funny, moving and profound "Underneath the Lintel" Thursday night to a nearly full house at their versatile space at The Cigar Factory.

The award-winning, 90-minute one-man show by Glen Berger could be called a powerful treatise on the vicissitudes of life - but then you'd stay away in droves.

Yet the piece is just that. It is the sheer beauty of the language matched by the sheer beauty of this performance that makes this an extraordinary evening in the theater.

Stephen White, a classically trained Shakespearean actor, does not simply take on the character of an aging retired Dutch librarian; he lives this truth with every movement of his hands, every raised eyebrow, every nuance of accent and tone.

Directed by Pure Theatre's co-founder, Sharon Graci, White recounts in purported lecture form his character's obsession with the life of a person whose book was returned over a hundred years after it was checked out.

In following the "clues" he finds in the form of a tram ticket, a Chinese laundry receipt and a love letter from 1906, he seeks meaning for the life of the person he comes to believe is the mythical Wandering Jew and, of course, his own.

Alone, living the most structured of existences, and having never been outside his native city, the librarian travels the world, gaining insights and experiences in his quest, losing his job in the process.

A study in contrasts - between paranoia and trust, inanity and insanity, reality and fantasy - he remains convinced of the significance of solving this mystery.

Presenting his "scraps" (of evidence), investing his library date stamper with world-shaking worth, drawing wildly on the walls, offering a set of unremarkable slides as inviolate proof, his passion is to present the results of his now purpose-driven life.

"Underneath the Lintel" is required viewing for every actor, techie, author, director and theater lover in the city.

The state.

The world.