'Gaze on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Does a building have a soul? The men who design it certainly do, in Luna Stage's clever world premiere of The Tallest Building in the World, playing in West Orange through May 15.

The play by Matt Schatz celebrates the birth of the World Trade Center in the mid 1960s much as if it were a human. Although there is no mention of 9/11, many of its lines are haunting in retrospect.

And if Schatz treats the creation of the towers as a birth, this one is almost a breach. His play is an imaginative rendering of its early history, but he mostly sticks to its true structural bones.

Before you have a skyscraper you must have a vision, an architect, a structural engineer and a director, the guy who pulls it all together. Not only does he honor this monument, Schatz makes his lens larger by including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Manhattan Company skyscraper -- each of which in their time dominated the New York skyline. This story is about size on a grand scale and those who dare to reach the sky.

Director Troy Miller does an excellent job of making a tight unit of this holy trinity. Gino (David Bonanno), is a composite of the real life Guy Tozzalu, director of the Port Authority's World Trade Center Department, and Rino Monte, the project's chief engineer.

Bonanno plays Gino as a "likable, regular guy" who has the difficult job of managing this very unpopular project. Previously he has led such a tame life, Gino explains to the architect, he hasn't even slept with any other woman than his wife.

Now he has to deal with a city that doesn't want to lose Radio Row; fellow bureaucrats who deride the towers as looking like the delivery box for a real skyscraper; and engineering problems that threaten to tumble the towers before they are even built. Architect Yama (Pun Bandhu, borrowing from the real life Minoru Yamasaki) is appalled at having to design a structure with 10 million square feet of space, the towers' ultimate size.

The architect is a foil to Gino's cool head, an artist with a tempermental nature who wants to "play with shadow and light," not create a monstrosity that will menace the city. He doesn't even like its name: "Why not call it the World Center?" Unlike Gino, Yama's third wife has just thrown him out and he has just "ticked off" his secretary by sleeping with her.

Lee (Kane Prestenback), the structural engineer, rounds out the ensemble with his quintessential nerd, reedy voice, slide rule and all. He wins over Gino with tabletop engineering demonstrations and saves the day with some clever engineering tricks as the play unfolds in a series of meetings between the three principals.

Versatile Drew Dix and Nehassaiu deGannes play multiple parts as city bureaucrats, a shop owner, Yama's secretary, and as voices of the skyline. deGannes in particular, makes a flashy, passionate Chrysler Building, shining in a silver gown and crown, not an easy part to play.

Robert Monaco, scenic and technical designer, had to push out the intimate Luna Stage to create a large rectangular space for the cast to hash out the details that will make architectual history. A large map of Manhattan changes as the team adds models.

Sadly, the Twin Towers are never given a chance to speak. But as the audience knows from the beginning, they did not last long enough in the sky to have a say. Schatz implies that every age has their own skyscraper and we seem to have lost ours.

The cast seems to speak for the absent pair, and as Gino and Yama imagine them, they stand majestic, giving off an astonishing light. As Lee says about the Brooklyn Bridge, "it's still standing, but what changes the world, is what no longer stands."