‘KING LEAR’: CASE OF <i> DEJA VU</i>

In the wake of Le Theatre du Soleil’s astonishing appearances at the Olympic Arts Festival, more than one observer wondered when the first home-grown imitation of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Orientalized Shakespeare would pop up.

That moment has now arrived. Reza Rory Abdoh’s staging of “King Lear” has Mnouchkine written all over it (except in the program). It’s a Mnouchkine mnemonic--a way of remembering the French director’s techniques. It also demonstrates what happens to those techniques when such ingredients as space, money and discipline are missing.

Like Mnouchkine, Abdoh sets his Shakespeare in a vaguely non-Western land. France Holland’s costumes are Persian-Indian-Chinese, with additional contributions from commedia dell’arte (the Fool) and contemporary California (Cordelia’s leather pants in the last act). The makeup follows suit.

So does the incessant stream of chimes and raga and other exotic sounds. The music is taped, so we can’t watch the musicians at work, as we did at Le Theatre du Soleil. But the effect is similar.

The young cast uses ramps at the sides for most of its entrances and exits. Often, as in Mnouchkine’s work, the actors squat and declaim their lines, facing the audience instead of the person to whom they’re speaking. They also attempt to incorporate Oriental movement into the play, but this is where the discipline starts to break down--much of this activity looks hastily learned and executed, and it’s not used consistently.

Abdoh isn’t completely beholden to Mnouchkine, but most of his own ideas don’t work out. He precedes Shakespeare’s first lines with an elaborate mimed ritual that adds nothing but 15 or 20 minutes to an evening that clocks in at four hours. Throughout the play, he tosses in detritus: snatches of the Dies Irae , live doves, an overly literal image of an eclipse, far too much distracting lightning. In short, he hasn’t learned to edit his own ideas.

The space in which all this occurs is no help. Instead of the vast, blond field on which Le Theatre du Soleil performed, “King Lear” is stuck in a closet--the Gangway Performance Center, murkily lit by Bronislaws Sklodowska. The room seems even smaller than it is, thanks to the visual clutter of a scribbled drawing on the wrinkled canvas that covers most of the stage (and doubles as a footrest for the spectators in the first row).

This production has its compensations: Most of the English is easier to understand than Mnouchkine’s French, and there’s always something new to watch. Did I mention the toy alligators?

Performances are at 5651 Hollywood Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m., through Feb. 10 (467-8682).