It is not often these days that a play is written with grace in pursuit of intelligence. Both seem out of fashion. "A Matter of Gravity" … is hardly in the class of her wonderful "The Chalk Garden," or the lesser "The Chinese Prime Minister," but time spent with even an untidy Enid Bagnold play is time spent in the company of intellectual finesse….

["A Matter of Gravity"] is about a very rich, very aristocratic and devastatingly bright old English lady who is living alone in a grand country house. She is alone, that is, except for a cook who has the disconcerting habit of rising into the air now and again….

[Mrs. Basil has] outgrown faith in science and so the choice between believing what she sees—the floating cook—and what makes sense, ultimately concludes with a final philosophy: "There are things to which I am tied...