STAGE REVIEW : PAVLOVSKY’S GENIUS SHINES IN ONE-ACTS

Hispanic theater has been turning lately to more than agitprop. We have Manuel Puig’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” at the Cast Theatre, Luis de Tavira’s staging of Calderon’s “Life Is a Dream” at Cal State L.A. and Donald Freed’s “Villa!” at the Bilingual Foundation (although, were we to get technical, the latter is a play about the Mexican rebel written by a non-Mexican).

Now comes PAVLOVSKYfest at Stages, launched last weekend with a pair of arresting one-acts by Eduardo Pavlovsky. Don’t let the name fool you. This psychiatrist/actor/playwright is an Argentine and his plays--”Pablo” and “Potestad”--are extremely sophisticated pieces performed in Spanish by a company from Buenos Aires that prominently includes the author.

If anything works against the plays, it is the fact that a fluent understanding of Spanish is necessary (something this writer does not possess). They are complex psycho-political dramas in which much is lost if the language isn’t there. Consider yourself warned, but also be aware that the plays offer some exceptional performances and the first theatrical commentary to be seen in Los Angeles on Argentine political repression.

Of the two plays, “Pablo” is the more disturbing--a Pinteresque three-character piece in which the link among the three is the unseen fourth character of Pablo. Much in the same way that Pinter’s “Old Times” never fully answers the questions it poses, the looming identity of Pablo remains an absence and a presence, a weight and a menace from “there” in the immediate “here.” He is never defined and never materializes--or does he?

A good deal of what is said in this piece lies between the lines, when L. (played by Pavlovsky) is visited by V. (Ricardo Bartis), who claims to have been sent by their mutual acquaintance, Pablo. The ensuing reminiscence confounds reality and unreality as the two retreat deeper into the twilight zone by interacting with a woman, Irina (Elvira Onetto), who also claims to know Pablo. What is cannot be distinguished from what might be or what is not. “He who has no past cannot betray,” says one of the characters. Not to remember becomes crucial and impossible.

“Pablo” is fraught with this kind of inference and provocative double thinking. In its half-articulated ideas lurks an undefined ever-present danger. In the most seemingly innocent of encounters lies peril. Sex turns to violence; a simple question becomes a threat; an answer creates chill.

It is the unspecified terror that weighs most heavily. One description offered of this play is that it is “an invocation of the collective subconscious of victims and victimizers.” Its implications in a nation where for years, people simply “disappeared” requires no elaboration. The acting by Pavlovsky, Bartis and Onetto, under the taut direction of Laura Yusem, is nothing short of stunning.

“Potestad,” the second play, is a virtual tour de force for Pavlovsky. He is aided and abetted, late in this portrait of a personality in shambles, by the silent presence of a woman, but this extraordinary exercise is, in fact, an inspired monologue, performed in an array of minute detail, a concert of gesture, inflection and words, that leaves the viewer limp and amazed by the end.

In broad terms, a doctor who claims the daughter of a deceased couple for his own, is later himself bereft of the child by the authorities, when it is discovered she was never his. Understanding the Spanish is even more essential to “Potestad” than it is to “Pablo” if one is to fully savor its subtlety and the richness of its detail. It is a cry of deep personal outrage that starts out surreptitiously with a comic self-parody and ends with a strident, howling, rigorous indictment of repressive systems.

Where has Pavlovsky been all our lives?

Not unlike some of Dario Fo’s and Franca Rame’s custom-tailored attacks on social and political hypocrisy, Pavlovsky’s “Potestad” is the frequently funny, ultimately searing portrait of a slightly vain, selfish man helplessly turned victim. For sheer force and vivisection of character, it is a work of pure genius.

Performances at 1540 N. McCadden Place run only through Saturday with “Pablo” playing Wednesday at 8 p.m. and Friday at 7:30 p.m., and “Potestad” playing today and Thursday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15; students, $12. Reservations: (213) 465-1010.

PAVLOVSKYfest continues March 12 with “Camara Lenta/Slowmotion,” performed in English this time by an American cast (previews start Friday). If it delivers the kind of emotional and psychological punch of its Spanish-language predecessors, we’re in, at the very least, for something vivid.