Blackouts notwithstanding — it's impossible to imagine living without electricity. But for 19th-century Americans, the advent of this mind-blowing technology altered their lives forever, and not always for the best. Downtown theatre maverick Lear deBessonet combines a contemporary structure and video projections with an old-fashioned sentimentality and vaudevillian acts to stage Deborah Stein's Bone Portraits, a brisk examination of invention and its aftermath. Thomas Edison's quest to take the conception of the X-ray to the next level comes center stage, but parallel stories — from that of Marie Curie to those of unheard of scientists and commoners — blend to create an amusing and often thought-provoking look at discovery.

- SP