HE SHOWS DARK SIDE OF ‘ALFRED AND VICTORIA’

“I got very involved in women’s issues--and also the Marquis de Sade,” Gerald Hiken said genially of his directing/performing preparation for Donald Freed’s “Alfred and Victoria,” opening Nov. 19 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. (He plays Alfred, replacing Philip Baker Hall, whose involvement in a film overlapped with the play’s opening.)

“The Marquis--whatever else you say about him--was a pioneer in freedom. He felt that if a body was free to get rid of the king, it should be free to get rid of the rules. If people wanted to get into hitting and kicking each other, they should be free to do it; there should be no laws to restrict them.”

Issues of manipulation and submission, sex and self-worth are at the core of Freed’s new work which, though emphatically fictional, has its thematic base in the highly sensationalized 13-year affair of the rich and powerful Alfred Bloomingdale and his much-younger consort, Vicki Morgan.

“There’s the issue of older person/younger person (she’s 16 at the outset), teacher/student, father/child, lovers--all of that,” noted Hiken, 60, appraising the empty theater (whose seating has been rearranged to simulate a cabaret atmosphere).

“It started out physical, because he bought her for sexual purposes--but something else happens and you see her development, how they affect each other. And yes, sadomasochism is one part of the relationship.”

Hiken found himself immediately attracted by that darker side.

“I grew up in the Midwest, in Milwaukee, and I was trained--from my period, my culture, the city I lived in, the people I lived with--to be nice . Nice generally meant not telling the truth, not telling what you felt, not acting on your feelings. Nice meant ‘Shut up.’

“At the same time, we were seeing a tremendous amount of cruelty in the world: the Japanese internment in California, the Jewish internment in Germany. So on one hand, we’re brought up with the belief of what isn’t done--and yet, we’re living with things that are absolutely unthinkable.

“How could people who love Beethoven and who say ‘Good morning’ so nicely kill people in a gas chamber? I think that’s precisely it. When you’ve got such a dissociation between feelings, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it nicely, correctly, according to the rules. If you no longer know what you feel, you can be tricked into doing all kinds of things.”

He makes no such apologies for Adolf Eichmann, whom he portrayed (winning an L.A. Weekly award) in the 1984 Los Angeles Actors Theatre staging of another Freed play, “The White Crow.”

“There was a point then where I almost didn’t go on,” he said solemnly, “because I felt that I was making money and artistic fame out of the deaths of an awful lot of people. And I thought, ‘How can I say to someone who came from one of those places (concentration camps) why I was doing the play?’

“I had to find whatever there was in me or them or him (Eichmann) that was worth expressing. For me, it was when you give yourself to a government or a man because it gives you power--and you’re not willing to look at what the expense is. Eichmann was disregarding what was happening to the people he was shuttling back and forth on those trains. Even when he saw it, even when it made him sick to his stomach. He was affected, but not enough to stop.”

Equally unsettling for Hiken was his stint in LATC’s recent staging of De Ghelderode’s “Barabbas.”

“I really objected to the connections linking Jesus Christ with the left-wing revolutionary movement of the ‘20s (when it was written),” he said. “I was putting my body on the line (especially his feet, which suffered from the heavily textured set) for a play that talked about things I didn’t believe in.

“I was told I was too sensitive--that an actor should do his job and not have those kinds of feelings. Well, the bottom line is that I’m not really an actor. I have a skill at it, but it’s not the center of my life. So my commitment to the material often makes me more serious than people around me.”

After two years of collaboration with Freed on “Alfred and Victoria,” he’s passionate about its message: “We want to show how to stop taking abuse, get equal with your oppressor. What it’s done for me is clarify whom I should be nice to and whom I shouldn’t be nice to. I should be nice to people who are dependent on me. I could, for example, be mean to the stage manager; I wouldn’t, because she wouldn’t be in a position to come back at me. But I can be not nice (read: critical) to my equals--because they can take it and give it back.”

In spite of the emotional tugs of war, Hiken says he’s loving this return to theater--in part because he’s been out of directing for so long. Originally envisioning a career as a teacher/writer, Hiken turned to directing in college “just so I could put on my own plays. I had no intention of acting.”

In 1964, he moved to California to teach at Stanford, but gave that up four years later to create an acting duo.

“We toured for nine years, learning how to act for prisoners, school kids and Eskimos--and my family (wife Barbara, children Nina and Noah) put up with it,” he recalled. “But it wasn’t easy. I used to make craft things so I could buy Christmas presents for my kids.”

In 1982, Hiken went to Broadway--and received a Tony nomination--for “Strider,” and has since submerged himself in the local theater scene, where his credits also include (at LAAT and LATC) “An Enemy of the People,” “The Three Sisters” and “The Triumph of the Spider Monkey.”

With the new show, he acknowledged that “audiences have been attracted to it because of the sex and nastiness. But I hope we’ll go beyond that curiosity--and touch as many people as possible.”