LATC PRODUCTION : ABSURD AND THE REAL MELD IN DIETZ’S ‘INFINITY’

Steven Dietz’s “Foolin’ Around With Infinity” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center isn’t, thank God, a worthy play. Worthy plays make us feel guilty both about their subject matter and about the fact that we’re not enjoying the presentation. “Foolin’ Around” treats a horrific possibility lightly.

What if the man with his thumb on the big red button were to flip out? Not the President, but the commander of a missile response center a couple of miles under the earth. We’re told that such things can’t happen--that there are all sorts of built-in checks and counterchecks---but Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren’t supposed to happen either.

Presumably Dietz doesn’t find the possibility amusing. But he sees something zany in the trust that we put in human-monitored systems to save us from human error. Rather than write a sermon about it, he’s invented an absurdist fable. We’re in the control room of a missile silo somewhere under Utah. (We’re in several places, but let’s start with that.) The missiles are nestled all snug in their beds, and Commander Mac (Robert Darnell) and his deputy Jesse (Gregory Wagrowski) are playing their nightly game of Monopoly.

It’s Jesse’s 364th night on watch. He came below when something--but what?--happened to McCormick’s previous deputy. Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. Enter--but from where?--Mr. Anderson (Budge Threlkeld.)

Mr. Anderson is one of the more entertaining symbols in recent drama. He embodies the irrationality factor, often seen when people do the same humdrum jobs from night to night. He’s like a malevolent Ed Wynne, stirring up trouble for the fun of it. He has great fun with Jesse and Mac. They end up in a shootout.

But that’s only half of the play--its outer ring, to borrow an image from Russell Pyle’s high-tech set. At its epicenter we find McCormick’s daughter, Luke (Suzann Calvert). She lives in a Civil Defense shelter and spends a good deal of time casting spells: homey American ones with Crayolas and Quaker Oat boxes.

Delightful girl, and no more out of touch with reality, it is implied, than the men behind the thick glass. The female principle is also represented by Karen Kondrazian, commenting from the sidelines in that wonderful dark voice of hers, like one of the Fates. She has seen this show before. Hopeless.

I never figured out why the Kondrazian character was called You, but this is not a play that you’re supposed to figure out, any more than one of Ionesco’s fables. It’s about the fact that things don’t quite square, and that a truly human system leaves room for the X factor--doesn’t try to impose a grid on the world.

When it does, there’s comedy. Mac and Jesse avail themselves of one of those services that supply sexy phone conversations, and the coding and decoding necessary before the product is delivered (presumably Dietz has done his research here) is almost as elaborate as that surrounding a nuclear countdown. What comfort we Westerners take in numbers!

Dietz allows himself a moral (‘Women birth; men kill.”) But mostly he lets the play happen, in its Alice in Wonderland way, and director Bill Bushnell wisely follows exactly the same procedure.

This makes for some excellent fooling around. Beat by beat, Bushnell’s cast is very clear about what zone of reality they’re in and how to make the moment play. Threlkeld has the most fun as Anderson, popping in from all corners, in all manner of disguises, but there’s enjoyment in the playing of the more human characters, too--a sense that these actors are happy in the play and with each other.

Calvert and Kondrazian relate in a mother-daughter way; Wagrowski and Darnell relate in a Cain-and-Abel way; and Nick Scarmack assists from the side as an “effects person,” reminding us that “Foolin’ Around With Infinity’s” most important reality zone is the theater. Pyle’s lighting and Christine Lewis Hover’s costumes make the same point. The only way to comprehend infinity is to fool around with it.

‘FOOLIN’ AROUND WITH INFINITY’ Steven Dietz’s play, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Director Bill Bushnell. Producer Diane White. Set and lighting design Russell Pyle. Costume design Christine Lewis Hover. Sound design Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Jill Johnston. With Nick Scarmack, Karen Kondrazian, Suzann Calvert, Robert Darnell, Budge Threlkeld. Plays Tuesdays-Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday-Sunday matinees at 2. Closes May 17. Tickets $10.50-$25. 514 S. Spring St. (213) 627-5599.