But the company has never explored death more elliptically and disquietingly than in Love Unpunished, its provocative new piece. The beautifully produced, almost wordless, movement-based show needs a specialist audience, and I can imagine viewers loving Love or hating it. Personally, I love some of it, admire much of it, am perplexed by a lot of it, and am ultimately disappointed by it.

A word of warning before I proceed: No doubt Pig Iron would prefer audiences see the show with little knowledge of specifics, and what follows may include a few spoilers.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN: Pig Iron's final show of the season is a quiet—and disquieting—meditation on death.

Love begins innocently enough, in the stairwell of a large modern building (kudos to designer Mimi Lien). People descend, individually and in groups. They seem mostly to be working, focused on other things. Then a fireman ascends the stairs. Clearly there's something more here than business-as-usual—but what?

(Here are more spoilers.) It will not surprise anybody that Love is in part a meditation on 9/11. Which of us will ever see firemen in a skyscraper staircase without remembering that day?

Yet part of the fascination with Love is that it doesn't follow that narrative path. In fact, the arrival of the firemen provokes some concern—but only for a moment. People continue to stream down the stairs—some are the same ones we've seen before, some are new. Are we seeing a continuing process? Or a series of snapshots from different times? What exactly is going on? (Love might be a theme and variations, or an endless loop—the latter links it to '60s experimental films like Warhol's Sleep.)

I'm all for ambiguity, essential to modern art. But ultimately, I think Love runs aground. (Here's another, bigger spoiler.) At a point nearly an hour in, several characters arrive in rubber George W. Bush masks.

For me, this indicates the real end—intellectual rigor has given way to sophomoric theatrics. I think Love never recovers.

But that's me—you may well have a completely different take. I will say that the first 15 minutes or so had me completely hooked, and the whole business is executed with breathtaking precision. Speaking of which—hearty congratulations to the entire cast. They are certainly the most cardiovascularly toned and vertigo-free ensemble in Philadelphia!

Through June 11, Pig Iron Theatre Company, The Cinema, 3925 Walnut St., 215-627-1883