The Late Great Henry Boyle

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ravaged intellectual curmudgeon, the recently closed Guest Artist. The Late Great Henry Boyle, making its Midwest premiere at the Purple Rose through June 3, tills a similar patch, with Jon Lepard playing a scholar whose brilliance has catapulted him into an unstable glory.

Like Guest Artist, Livonia playwright David MacGregor's drama explores the one-two punch of fame and drink foisted on someone who isn't equipped to handle either one gracefully. With his long, chiseled face and slim, loose-jointed body that looks as if it had been made to model tweed jackets and trench coats, Lepard is the quintessential neurasthenic bookhead. As medievalist professor Henry Boyle, unworldly, befuddled, rumpled, and unwashed, he's living in his office, tanked on absinthe — which, in his unworldliness, he doesn't realize is not intended to be drunk straight — and even more tanked on a tattered copy of the writings of Boethius, a sixth-century Roman philosopher.

In this altered state, Boyle writes a novel that makes him famous almost literally overnight and keeps his tenure from being revoked. Add to that slightly fantastical proposition this one: the guy is a babe magnet. As the play opens, he's losing his lusty wife, but by dinnertime he has another fair bosom in a swoon with a line of patter about castle latrines.