TRANSCENDING THE PAIN OF TORTURE

Torture gets a new twist in “The Chamber of Little Ease,” a new drama by Bayard Johnson, opening this weekend at the Powerhouse.

“It’s something Bayard has been intrigued with since he was a little kid,” explained director John Crowther. “He discovered it on a field trip to Canada at Madame Tussaud’s: a torture chamber/cage from the Middle Ages used for those who tried to assassinate the king. You couldn’t stand or sit, and you were put in it for the rest of your life--which usually wasn’t very long. But there’s a story of one man who survived in it for 40 years, was finally released . . . and died two weeks later.

“Out of that story came this play, with implications that are more philosophical than political. After 40 years in a cage, the prisoner has transcended his physicality and achieved a sort of (spiritual) freedom. But when he’s released, no one wants to hear what he has to say about that transcendence, finding freedom in self. Limitations are placed on the individual by the system: They allow someone just so much freedom and nothing more. What Bayard’s saying is that that order, system, rules, law--imposed in the name of making our lives better--instead gradually erodes the quality of our lives.”

The actor-director (his Broadway credits include “Something About a Soldier” and “Where’s Daddy”; he’s also playing the prisoner here) believes that Johnson’s questioning of societal programming “displays a healthy skepticism, which I share. We have to read everything: the back page as well as the front. And you can’t take anything at face value. Look at the contra hearings. Last November, the President, with a straight face, told us one thing. Now it’s an entirely different story.”

Moving up to the present day comes “Garbage” (a title, not an opinion), Dennis Doph’s scathing look at the local used-record business. It opens June 5 at the Boyd Street Theatre.

“I was interested in that atmosphere: all those different types of people under one roof,” offered the writer-director, who garnered his material from a friend’s working experiences in the Fairfax area. “It’s a real sleazy combination: Some of the people are artistically driven, others are totally motivated by greed. The title describes the product, because that itself is a throwaway, has no value anywhere else. But there it does. It’s the same atmosphere in any used commodity business: vaguely stimulating--and slightly repulsive.”

Doph, who claims his Bite, Ltd. group “has been called the theater of verbal abuse,” warned that “this is not light family entertainment. It’s somewhat more specialized than (what) people are used to: a great deal of blue language, blue material. We’re dealing with a subculture, so there’s an automatic clash of elements. And the verbal atmosphere is frequently abusive, coarse. Also, it deals with every form of sexuality, debased sex and obsenity . . . but compared to the morality of our current Administration, I feel like we’re ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.’ ”

Now it’s back in time again--to the gentler 1930s--for Mary Coyle Chase’s “Me Third,” opening Saturday at Actors Alley.

“It’s a newly found lost play,” explained director Robin Share. “It was written in 1935 (by the author of “Harvey”) and donated to the Federal Theater Project, part of the WPA. People remember the era of the Federal Theater Project as very political: ‘living newspapers,’ social issues. This play is not that at all. It’s big and broad (with a 19-member cast), a regular, old Depression-Era comedy. It’s about a typical pretentious upper-class family who is outsmarted by the everyday working-class folks--in a funny way.

“It was written before naturalism became popular, when people went to the theater to be entertained, to laugh at the wealthy and sympathize with the hard-working,” Share continued. “So it’s got a lot of the qualities of ‘30s movies. The romantic scenes are very romantic, the ridiculous scenes very ridiculous. It’s good-hearted, warmhearted and long: an old-fashioned three-act play with two intermissions. Back then, people wanted their money’s worth--and in this, they got it.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Andrew Bergman’s comedy “Social Security,” opened recently at the Ahmanson, with Laurence Luckinbill and Lucie Arnaz as a married pair of New York art dealers coping with the arrival of her mother.

In this paper, Don Shirley leveled a good portion of his displeasure at playwright Bergman. “He does no favor to his leading characters by letting them off so easily. Without any genuine conflicts, histories or distinctive traits, Barbara and David are terribly hollow . . . . Arnaz appears to be at home in the role; only later do you realize how thin her material is. With Luckinbill, the strain is apparent from beginning to end. It’s bad enough that David is one-dimensional, but Luckinbill hasn’t even mastered that dimension.”

From Viola Hegyi Swisher in Drama-Logue: “Seen under the magnifying glass of theater, ‘Social Security’ teeters--and sometimes totters--between life’s genuine funnybone and a forged facsimile thereof known as a TV sitcom. But don’t sell ‘Social Security’ short. The laughs are all there, ready for audiences to make their choices among the potential boffolas.”

In the Hollywood Reporter, Duane Byrge found the play a cross between “The Man Who Came to Dinner” and “Where’s Poppa?”: “ ‘Social Security’ doles out just enough light, breezy laughs to make the truly humor-deprived chuckle. Sitcom thin, it’s nevertheless crisp, fast-moving and palatable . . . . Bergman’s consistently witty dialogue, particularly Luckinbill’s juicy and cutting asides, nicely flavors the production.”

Kim Masters, in Daily Variety, admired the supporting performances (as well as those of Luckinbill and Arnaz), yet noted: “It is somewhat ironic that a play about the unpredictability of human nature should be as predictable as this one. But although ‘Social Security’ does not offer any surprises, it does offer plenty of heartfelt laughs that linger long after the curtain goes down.”