Fraser Grace's "Breakfast With Mugabe" is fully consistent with Quantum Theatre's practice of presenting edgy, contemporary theater that does not shy away from controversial topics. It previews tonight and opens Friday in another unorthodox space, smack in the middle of Downtown in the central rotunda of the once luxurious Lazarus store, now being refurbished as Piatt Place but still hinting of ghosts.

But when Quantum's Karla Boos chose to stage the American premiere of the 2005 play about Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe and the dark side of African spirituality, she could not have foreseen how timely it would be. When written, it looked back to Zimbabwe's 2002 election. But Mugabe has just called snap presidential and parliamentary elections for March 29, seeking at 84 his fifth term as president of his tormented country.

Beyond that, his continuing destruction of the Zimbabwean economy has just reached a new milestone with his government printing $10 million bills (worth about $4). Mugabe has thus achieved what Zimbabweans with a sense of the tragi-comic see as the transformation of every citizen into a millionaire. And the play's picture of a collapsed, haunted Zimbabwe is not entirely unlike the state into which the world now fears Kenya, another previously successful African country, is falling.

To savor "Breakfast With Mugabe" it helps to know how Zimbabwe and Mugabe himself got into their current state. As a British colony prior to independence in 1980, Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, had some 6 million Africans ruled by a quarter of a million whites, mostly of British origin. Generally prosperous, it had a mixed economy that included minerals (notably chromium), food and commercial agriculture (notably tobacco) and light industry, with a decent infrastructure. After years of warfare between Africans and whites, the whites finally concluded that it was not only necessary but perhaps desirable to grant the country independence under majority rule.

There was considerable ferment among the African leadership before and after independence, including the assassinations of two leaders, Herbert Chitepo and Josiah Tongogara. This reflected clan battles among the Shona, the largest tribal grouping, to which Mugabe belongs. Tongogara is generally believed to have disposed of Chitepo, and Mugabe, of Tongogara. Tongogara is the ghost in the play, like Banquo at Macbeth's banquet.

The African spirituality of the characters is reminiscent of elements in some August Wilson plays. But what there provides an internal emotional core, in "Breakfast With Mugabe" becomes a menacing, all-possessing presence unmitigated by any central, anchoring values.

Grace's Mugabe knows from experience that only death can displace him from the presidency, so he is afraid, and his fear terrifies his bling-laden young wife. The play's other two characters are a white psychiatrist, who has been called to the State House in Harare on special duty for the Great Chief, and a bodyguard, both of whom add complications.

One of the last of the black liberators of colonial Africa but now a ruthless dictator, Mugabe is a great role for actor Don Marshall, the 1993 Post-Gazette Performer of the Year. Supporting him are Ezra Barnes, Rebecca Thomas and Gregory Mikell. Boos directs. And Quantum regulars will be pleased to hear there are both heat and finished bathrooms.

When playgoers grasp the play's state of affairs, they may come to look around in the darkened theater space in a darkened center city to seek reassurance that lethal ghosts do not wander around Fifth and Wood. Presumably Boos will turn the lights on brightly when the play ends.