No Mere Slip of the Wrist : Paul Mullin’s tale of an ill-fated atomic experiment is the product of years of research.

In May 1946, Louis Slotin, a Canadian physicist working at Los Alamos, N.M., set out to “tickle the dragon’s tail”--a risky but routine experiment he had performed dozens of times before. Inserting a simple screwdriver into the critical assembly--a tabletop apparatus used to boost and study fission for military applications--Slotin slowly lowered its reflective upper shell closer to the plutonium core, while a roomful of interested scientists looked on. This time, Slotin’s sure hand slipped--and the dragon bit back, with a telltale blue glow of atomic fire.

Slotin immediately pushed the device from the table, halting the reaction. For him, however, standing closest to the assembly, the dread blue glow was a death warrant. He lingered in agony for nine days before slipping into a coma and death.

Was Slotin a hero, a dedicated researcher in the atomic trenches who saved the other men in the room through his quick action? Or was he a show-off, an adolescent grandstander who exposed his colleagues to an outdated and unnecessary procedure?

Both sides of the issue are explored by playwright Paul Mullin in his intellectually provocative new drama “Louis Slotin Sonata,” at the Hollywood Court Theatre through Saturday. Based heavily on the actual transcripts of declassified government documents, the play also segues into hallucinogenic reveries as the dying Slotin (William Salyers) ponders the morality of his deadly research. Mullin’s blend of hard science, surrealism, ethical conundrum and sophisticated wordplay--even the occasional pun--is as surprisingly entertaining as it is poignant.

Structured in musical sonata form, “Sonata” contains dense scientific references that could boggle the lay mind, if they were not handled with such clarity. For Mullin, 32, science is an inherited passion. “My father, whose name was also Paul Mullin, was a physicist and an engineer who was getting his PhD in physics when he had his car accident,” Mullin says. “He was in a coma for several months.” The elder Mullin died before his son was born.

Mullin’s stay-at-home mother was left with no job and four children to raise. “It was a pretty awful time for all involved,” Mullin says. “But that’s probably the subject of my next play.”

Raised in rural Baltimore County, Md., Mullin started acting in high school, but switched emphasis in college to playwriting. A two-year stint in New York City yielded his first produced plays. “I like to say that one of my plays was on Broadway--but it was Broadway south of Houston in a 40-seat theater,” Mullin says with a laugh.

More productions followed after Mullin switched coasts from New York to Seattle. Married this summer, Mullin recently moved once again to New York, where his singer wife, Heather Curtis Mullin, is pursuing an opera career.

Mullin is accustomed to getting mixed press for his sometimes esoteric work. In one experimental piece, Mullin had his characters function like subatomic particles--not exactly the stuff of pop culture entertainment. He takes the criticism in stride. “People think I’m trying to do too much,” he admits, “and I’m definitely trying to do a lot. But my whole approach to theater is that our audience has taken the trouble of driving to the theater, is paying a lot of money and sitting in uncomfortable seats--at least they’re uncomfortable in the theaters that do my stuff. So we owe them the world. I want to send them off with their heads spinning.”

Mullin is particularly passionate about the subject of nuclear proliferation, once a flash point for activists, and which he feels has slipped to the back burner of the national psyche--an attitude arguably reflected by the Senate’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last October.

It’s a trend Mullin finds appalling. “There’s this attitude that the Cold War is over,” Mullin says. “But the bombs are still out there, in a much less stable environment now.”

Within the theater community as well, Mullin was initially frustrated by a general indifference to the subject of the play. “People said, ‘We’ve done the whole horrors of nuclear energy thing,’ ” Mullin remembers. “ ‘Since this isn’t an issue anymore, do you think it still has relevance?’ ”

Eventually, Mullin found a group of kindred spirits at the Circle X Theatre in Los Angeles. A 4-year-old company, Circle X has an impressive record of husbanding new works, such as the critically acclaimed productions of “Great Men of Science, Nos. 21 & 22” and “Texarkana Waltz”--both also by Seattle playwrights.

The ties to Seattle go further: Circle X Company member Salyers, a friend of Mullin from their Seattle days, proposed “Sonata” to the company. Jim Anzide and Jonathan Westerberg, co-directors of the play, are also Seattle transplants, and Seattle-based mixed-media artist Gary Smoot designed the sets for “Sonata.”

Westerberg and Anzide took over late in the rehearsal process after the original director decamped. Despite time constraints, the two attacked the piece with historical rigor and accuracy.

“Working through the physics was the greatest challenge,” Westerberg says. “And representing people who are still alive. We wanted to stay true to who these people really are. Although Paul took some liberties, the script is pulled out of reality.”

“Paul did about eight years of research, on and off, before completing the script,” Anzide adds. “It was so dense with information, we had a lot of work to do.”

Mullin dug deep in his research, even landing a rare personal interview with Slotin’s fellow Los Alamos scientist and personal friend Philip Morrison (played here by Connor Trinneer). Information about Slotin was pretty scanty, however, until Mullin stumbled onto an unexpected mother lode.

“I sent off an e-mail to Los Alamos, and a month or so later I got a ream of documents,” Mullin says. Amazingly, the cache even included Slotin’s autopsy photos. “It’s not classified, so it’s not like I got any secrets or anything, but I felt like I had hit the Lotto. I think the people who sent me this stuff didn’t really know [what they were sending] and didn’t really care. It’s a tribute to the glories of bureaucracy.”

The lesson of Mullin’s play is that all it takes for disaster to happen is one unguarded moment, one slip of the hand. It is a lesson that Louis Slotin learned at a terrible price, but also an enduring legacy that Mullin’s play brings to life.

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“LOUIS SLOTIN SONATA,” Hollywood Court Theatre, 6817 Franklin Ave. Presented by Circle X Theatre Co.

Dates: Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Saturday. Prices: $15; Sunday, “pay what you can.”

Phone: (323) 969-9239, Ext. 2.