Utopia lost

The impossibility of ever achieving perfection, social or otherwise, is the underlying theme of Blithedale: A Virtual Utopia, a dramatization (or, perhaps "cyberization" would be more apt) of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance. (Director Tim Maner conceived the piece, with Elizabeth Banks credited as writer/adapter.) Hawthorne's novel was inspired by his failed encounter with Brook Farm, a commune in Massachusetts that aspired to a transcendental utopian ideal by