In the unlikely venue of Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev came within a hairsbreadth of signing an agreement to dismantle the entire nuclear arsenals of both the United States and the Soviet Union.

But the negotiations foundered over what has turned out to be a technical fantasy: the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars — an idea Reagan couldn't relinquish and Gorbachev couldn't accept.

An inside look at how these historic negotiations unfolded, what these men said in the heat of face-to-face conversations and how ultimately this heartbreaking failure was turned into a historic success comprises the subject of a new play by Richard Rhodes titled Reykjavik. The play will be performed as a reading at 7 tonight at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. The author, who describes the play as a work in progress, will be in attendance to answer questions afterward.

Rhodes has written 22 books, including the Pulitzer prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and the more recent Arsenals of Folly, from which he derived the inspiration and material for Reykjavik. The primary sources for the play have been taken from official documents, personal memoirs by participants and verbatim notes taken by both sides at the conference.

"The problem in writing the play was turning the formal diplomatic language of the conference into entertaining dialogue," Rhodes said. Actor Paul Newman was an adviser until his death in September.

Rhodes credits Gorbachev as the driving force behind the negotiations. "His major contribution was to insist they see disarmament as a common problem that required cooperation and a common solution," he said. Since no one could win a nuclear war, all attempts at supremacy had to be renounced.

What Reagan and Gorbachev shared, Rhodes said, was a deep-rooted desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Each man was a nuclear abolitionist. For Reagan, this was a dream that preceded his election to the presidency but one that, after his election, horrified hawkish advisers like Richard Perle, who sought to thwart every move Reagan made toward genuine disarmament. Rhodes calls Perle the Iago of the play, in effect whispering in Reagan's ear the words that killed the agreement.

"Reagan's tragedy was his inability to take the final step, to make the leap," Rhodes said. Reagan couldn't let go of the notion that the problem had a "technical fix," Star Wars, in contrast to Gorbachev, who insisted the problem was political and had to be solved politically.

In spite of this gigantic failure, Rhodes insists that Reykjavik was a historic success. In the end, the United States and Soviet Union agreed to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, thereby diminishing the chances of a nuclear accident, and further resolved to hold future conferences to reduce their mammoth nuclear arsenals.

In this presentation, Reagan is played by Liam Lockhart; Gorbachev by Peter Zapp; Perle by Christopher Dempsey; and Secretary of State George Schultz by Jonathan Richards. Eleven characters are involved in the production, directed by Natasha Warner.

This is a joint presentation by Umbrella Hat Productions and the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Other co-sponsors include the Los Alamos Committee on Arms Control and International Security, and Los Alamos Historical Society.

IF YOU GO

What: Pultizer Prize winning historian Richard Rhodes reads from a play he is writing, Reykjavik

When: 7 p.m. at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, 1615B Paseo de Peralta, $5 suggested donation

Information and reservations: Visit umbrellahat.org, call 505-986-3910 or e-mail caitlin@umbrellahat.org