Simon Russell Beale drives 'Bluebird'

New York theatergoers don't get to stare at Simon Russell Beale nearly enough. And when we do, his blazing gifts and short, squat, unorthodox presence are usually digging away at big, resonant characters by Shakespeare, Chekhov and Stoppard.

What a treat, then, to see this singular British actor -- up close, up very close -- embodying an ordinary London cabbie in Simon Stephens' 100-minute "Bluebird" at the Atlantic Theater Company's 95-seat Stage 2. Of course, the run, through Sept. 9, was sold out before most mortals could even hear about it, with no talk of extending or moving to less exclusive environs.

For you countless abandoned outside, I have perhaps the comforting news that "Bluebird" isn't much of anything you haven't seen before. Written in 1998, the play is mostly a series of improbable, apocalyptically tinged monologues by a succession of strangers who, one hot day and night, take a ride in a lived-in London taxi owned by a regular guy named Jimmy.

Jimmy may be just a guy, and director Gaye Taylor Upchurch's stark, well-performed production restricts decor to just three rearranged chairs against dark, brick walls. But as Beale reveals with the profundity of emotional elegance, there's nothing ordinary about humanity. At first, we get to know Jimmy by watching the man listen, moments of stillness in a face that somehow, with an exquisite minimum of undertow, keeps looking like different faces.

The customers he depersonalizes as "fares" use his backseat as a confessional or as a stage for, you know, the performance art of life. But the comfy guy at the wheel doesn't give much away. Slowly, Beale begins to unspool the damage -- a failed marriage, a dead daughter, a former career as a novelist. Every so often, he gets out of the cab to make a frantic call on a pay phone to his ex-wife (Mary McCann) who reluctantly agrees to see him.

Despite the danger of easy melodrama, their grieving scenes are an oasis of emotional honesty against the contrived poesy of some passengers. People complain about the record hot summer, but most are dressed for autumn. The vocabulary of the workers and hookers says much for the superior English schools, but Beale, in his simplicity, says more.

WHAT "Bluebird"

WHERE Atlantic Stage 2, 330 W. 16th St., Manhattan

INFO $55; 212-279-4200; atlantictheater.org

BOTTOM LINE The grandest small performance you'll never see.