All amounting to what Jonathan Franzen, in a recent article in the New Yorker, described so dully as that old "suspension of disbelief".
Dodds, who helped invent jazz drumming before there were such things as hi-hat or ride cymbals, demonstrates his rim-tapping and press-rolls, his playing tom-toms, woodblocks and bells, all amounting to a delicate science.
Written by the irrepressible Sarah Ruhl, the play offers yet another role for Chalfant, lithe and handsome, to inhabit with her characteristic gusto and intelligence, all amounting, no doubt, to the kind of spectacle that draws Chalfant's audience close, like the voice you remember hearing in school during story time.
What transpired then still sounds eerily familiar: cheating scandals, poor performance by minority groups, the narrowing of the curriculum, the public shaming of teachers, the appeal of more sophisticated measures of assessment, the superior scores in other nations, all amounting to a constant drumbeat about school failure.
Just compare recent, high-profile trading losses at banks such as NatWest, UBS and even Barings (all amounting to less than $1 1/2 billion) with the damage caused by reckless lending at Crédit Lyonnais in the 1980s (more than $20 billion) or by Japan's and East Asia's banks ever since (hundreds of billions).
The Union of Concerned Scientists published its own report in June concerning climate change-induced ozone increases that could result in an array of health-related costs by 2020: 2.8 million additional serious respiratory illnesses and nearly a million additional missed school days, all amounting to about $5.4 billion in costs.
