What the Rosenbach got in Ulysses: Sly Uses of a Book by James Joyce is a piece that reflects and plays with aspects of the literary masterpiece, its multiple perspectives and profusion of styles. Headlong's signature strategies become aligned with Joyce's radically deconstructive literary methods, an honorable artistic ancestry for this hip and questing group.

Through the even-length work (which opened Wednesday, with a final performance tonight), an updated version of the novel's central story was played and replayed: a florist, his wife and her red-clad fireman lover (e.g., Bloom, Molly and Blazes Boylan). Observers ringed the action - Headlong was at full strength with a cast of six - taking notes, taping or filming, and questioning the principals in a catechismal style lifted from the book. The conflicting answers given by wife and lover, or wife and husband (to questions such as, "How long was he in the bathroom?"), worked to break up and refract the story. Their sexually explicit verbal byplay echoes the earthiness of Joyce's characters.

In one repeating sequence, one dancer described another dancer's movements to a blindfolded third, who then tried to recreate the moves - often comically off. And one long sequence set a clockwork of jangling perspectives in motion: principals David Brick, Andrew Simonet and Amy Smith, each wearing Walkman headphones, described wildly different, wildly funny approaches to choreographing Ulysses - jazzy kitsch, visceral improve, and "literary." The sly commentary and wicked edge of these exercises were pure headlong.

Finally, a Bloom does, the work came home, to a tender reunion: Simonet lying in sober white light, while Smith offered a pensive soliloquy; they wrestled and embraced. Their movements, too, were then taken up by the others (including Nichole Canuso, Christy Lee and Heather Murphy). All's a blooming, buzzing profusion, this work seemed to say - of consciousness, of understanding, of meaning.

For all its ambition and formal effectiveness, this Ulysses doesn't attempt to suggest the majestic sweep of the novel, or its depth of feeling. Headlong's recent homage to Star Wars showed more gut-level engagement with that source. Still, this work's distance from a respectful, Hollywood-style adaptation is as acerbically refreshing as Headlong always is.