The plot deals with Bridget Cleary (Elizabeth Marvel) who has been communicating with extra-terrestrial spirits since she was about eight. She has disguised this phenomenon while growing up and into her marriage with Michael (Reed Birney) by taking an avid interest in the weather. She often wanders about outside all night long and is highly conscious of various atmospheric changes. She is sometimes edgy and evasive. Neither Michael nor her adolescent son Jeremy (a wired Justin Chatwin) seems to think anything eccentric about this behavior. Until, one night, Elizabeth leaves and fails to return.

What gives this theatrical hocus pocus any interest is watching the energy the actors put into their roles. Both Mr. Birney and Ms. Marvel are Obie award winning veterans in the downtown theater community and rarely give a bad performance. However, both are working in high gear to make this farfetched material believable. That they do not succeed is not their fault (although the incandescent Ms. Marvel almost gets to you especially when describing what went on during her most recent sojourn with the aliens). Dark Matters failure is one of ambition. In trying to fuse a domestic drama with an alien abduction, the author stumbles on both levels. One gets the feeling the whole endeavor would have worked much better as a comic strip.

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