'Sontag Reborn' review: Philospher grows

It is strange and a little thrilling to think about Susan Sontag as a 15-year-old girl in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Sontag, who died of cancer at 71 in 2004, was an icon of international sophistication -- arguably the closest America comes to a genuine intellectual who was also a celebrity.

In just 75 minutes, actress/adapter Moe Angelos and the company known as The Builders Association whisk us through Sontag's rigorous mind and vulnerable passions as expressed in her teen and early-career journals. Under the poetic multimedia direction of Marianne Weems, the production operates on at least three visual levels -- and considerably more emotional ones -- as a travelogue through Sontag's ridiculously precocious readings, writings, studies and sexual explorations.

A film of Angelos as the older Sontag, smoking and looking brutally elegant, hovers large over the stage, while her younger self scribbles her thoughts and adventures that are projected as a kind of magic writing behind her. The device gets a bit mechanical as Sontag grows more comfortable in her own skin and, paradoxically, gets harder to know. But the interplay of personal history and theatrical illusion is fascinating.

WHAT "Sontag Reborn"

WHERE New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St., Manhattan

INFO $65; 212-279-4200; nytw.org

BOTTOM LINE Fascinating journey into Sontag's journals.

SEE PHOTOS48 celebrities who've had Broadway roles