STAGE REVIEW : A DRAMA FROM THE SOUL IN ‘REQUEST CONCERT’

“Request Concert” at the Cast Theatre doesn’t pass the standard test for drama. No plot. No conflict. Not even any dialogue. A woman comes home from work, goes through her evening routine in silence, goes to bed. That’s it.

Ah, but if you were told that this is the woman’s last night on earth . . . Franz Xaver Kroetz’s play is indeed drama, albeit as muted as the soul of its heroine. And actress Salome Jens makes us see her as one.

Let’s acknowledge that “Request Concert” is a bit of an endurance test for the viewer, particularly at the Cast, where the seats are so crammed together that you need to get your neighbor’s permission to cross your legs. It’s possible to get physically restless as Jens wordlessly goes about her business--taking a spot out of her coat, heating something for supper, listening to the radio, yanking out her hide-a-bed.

Yet you’re surprisingly unbored. As at a Robert Wilson piece, the pulse slows down to accommodate the tempo of the onstage events, which Jens absolutely refuses to rush. Neither does she dawdle. Everything, to the drying of a spot, takes as much time as it would in life, and one becomes absorbed in the woman’s little tasks and the meticulous way she goes about them.

It’s clear that she’s a perfectionist. Things have to be exactly right: the towel folded just so, a little placemat at dinner. We smile, liking her self-respect. She even has a certain flair, although it’s not reflected in her drab furnished apartment. (Michael Devine did the set.) Perhaps she has just moved in.

Something else tells us she’s been there a long time. Her tasks have something in common with those devised by prisoners in solitary confinement. She needs her rituals. They keep her fear at bay.

They also give her pleasure. There’s a lovely relaxed moment when, after supper, she finds just the right music on the radio--Mozart--and plunges industriously into her needlework project. Life is not, after all, intolerable. Until one puts out the light.

The ending of the play shouldn’t be disclosed, but I was interested to see that Jens and her director, Michael Arabian, leave it possible to imagine that the woman will awaken in the morning, albeit in a hospital ward. Equally, it’s possible that they’ll find her in a couple of days, still sitting at the table.

Kroetz may not have meant to leave a loophole, but it only enriches his play. Depending on one’s optimism, one can read it as a study of a person done in by “society” or by “life” or by her own genetic pattern; or a study of a person who takes her life into her own hands. Jens inclines, I imagine, to the latter view, but not in a dippy way. Watch her face collapse when her woman is momentarily bereft of chores.

It’s an extraordinary performance, one that young actors should make it a point to see. It’s tough enough to perform one simple task on stage as if no one were watching. To perform a whole evening’s worth of them--moreover to build a characterization on them, without one word of dialogue--is what separates the women from the girls.

Yet “Request Concert” doesn’t come off as a mere acting exercise. Sombre and static, it nevertheless has a life of its own, and more laughter than one would have expected (as when Jens keeps returning to the mirror to deal with a suspected pimple.) The viewer may see his own little rituals here. ‘REQUEST CONCERT’

Franz Xaver Kroetz’s play, at the Cast Theatre. Director Michael Arabian. Translation Peter Sander. Set Michael Devine. Lighting Ilya Mindlin. Costumes Barbara Cox. Composer Hugh Levick. Stage manager Shawn LeVallee. With Salome Jens. Alternate actress Sandy Martin. Producers Ted Schmitt, Michael Arabian and Charles G. Davis, in association with Goethe Institute Los Angeles. Clark Branson and Corey L. Steele. Plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. (with Martin) and 7 p.m. Sundays. Closes Feb. 16. Tickets $12. 804 N. El Centro Ave. (213) 462-0265.