Freed

Charles Smith’s carefully paced historical drama relates the story of John Newton Templeton (Sheldon Best)—a freed slave and the first black graduate of Ohio University—with somewhat predictable precision. But in a story of a Greek-and-Latin scholar and his academic mentor, Robert Wilson (Christopher McCann), the lecture-hall rhythms feel strangely appropriate. And if Smith's play seems rather by-the-numbers, Emma O’Donnell (as Wilson's bitter wife) keeps appearing to color violently outside the playwright's lines.—Helen Shaw