Danish author Karen Blixen may be best known for her 1937 memoir “Out of Africa”— widely published under the pen name Isak Dinesen — and from its 1985 Oscar-winning screen adaptation, in which the erstwhile coffee farmer was portrayed by Meryl Streep.

But as the superbly acted drama “The Pact” recounts, Blixen (a formidable Birthe Neumann), in a later life wracked by pain, illness, loneliness and loss, had become a sort of exalted manipulator of souls coasting on wealth, status and a near-legendary gravitas. There was a smoke-and-mirrors aspect to Blixen’s powers that was seemingly all in the service of concocting good stories, even if she wasn’t necessarily writing them herself. (Though long divorced from her baron husband, she continued to be known as “Baroness.”)

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