ODD COUPLE OF ACTORS LINKED IN KUNDERA PLAY

They look different, they sound different, they think different. They are different.

Larry Hankin is skinny and dark-haired, fast, funny and more than a little sardonic. David Rasche is movie-star attractive: blond, urbane, well spoken and unabashedly cerebral. Together, they’re yin and yang, Abbott and Costello--and for now, the title characters in Milan Kundera’s “Jacques and His Master” (at the Los Angeles Theatre Center to Aug. 2).

“Kundera wrote this in 1968, (following) the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia,” Rasche began. “A lot of people were devastated and angry, and his response was this whimsical, rather delicate play of ideas--telling stories. But we had a hard time with it at first. Much of what American actors do has to do with subtext--we say ‘Good morning,’ when we mean ‘I hate you.’ Not here. Rather than telling people what we feel, we’re telling them what he wrote.”

“It wasn’t hard for me,” Hankin shrugged, “because I’m not into subtext. I mean, I’m a pretty superficial guy. I exist on the surface; you get too far below that, it gets too complex for me. For me, remembering lines is difficult. But the other--hey, it’s just two guys walkin’ and talkin’, telling bawdy stories. So I’d just focus on the things I liked and understood and leave the things I didn’t for later.

“He’s playing with the reality of theater,” Hankin added, “so sometimes we talk to the audience, sometimes the audience is not there, sometimes we join the stories, sometimes we’re just walking, sometimes we admit we’re onstage, sometimes we’re having dinner at the Stag Inn. But it’s not a big deal; it’s playful . I spent 10 years in improvisation (at Chicago’s Second City and San Francisco’s Committee Improvisational Theatre), which gives you the thing of ‘I can say anything.’ That’s great in terms of (quick-changes). But I had a lot to learn in terms of learning (and sticking to) specific lines.”

Again, different backgrounds, different styles. Rasche recalls happily the rehearsal time with translator/director Simon Callow “when we’d discuss the history of ideas, the age of reason, what was going on when Diderot lived.” (Kundera based this work on Diderot’s “Jacques le Fataliste.”)

“ I found the (play’s) philosophy on the back of a Dylan album,” Hankin quipped. “A guy’s looking for a treasure box. ‘Where’s the key?’ he asks. ‘It’s down the well,’ says the other. ‘How deep is the well?’ ‘How deep do you want to go?’ It’s like this. You want to get into philosophy, OK. You want to do shtick, fine. You want to talk about Diderot, terrific. Whatever.” (Concedes Rasche, “It is a lot about ideas. But it’s not like we’re up there reading volumes of Heidegger. The basic philosophies of life are approached, talked about, dealt with--and it’s absolutely funny .”)

Accordingly, Callow has conceived the pair as music-hall comedians, with both taking turns as the other’s straight man. As for egos, “There’s enough room in this for everyone to be happy,” Rasche stressed. Added New York native Hankin, “If there’s any artistic discussion, it’s not about him or me but what’s best for the play. I’ve got to protect that. I’ll tell you why: Because I, Larry, like the play.”

Both give credit to Callow for that reverence. “Simon is such a great intellect and artist; he started off with a play he loved, a group of people he loved,” said Rasche. “No matter how stupid, childish or inept we were, he never raised his voice. I’ve never worked with anyone like him. He’d say, ‘On this line, perhaps a pause,’ or ‘At the end of this line, an upward inflection, I think.’ But you never felt stepped on. It was always, ‘Look at this--you want it?’ And it would be gold .”

“When I got into this,” Hankin said, “I had no idea what it was supposed to be. So it was trust; I trusted Simon: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll do it.’ Sure, it was manipulation--but he always gave you an out. And he was appreciative of your rhythms. I want to take something away from Simon and give it to us--and that is that there’s a lot of things that we brought to this. I used to do stand-up comedy, and he cashed in on that. David is a real fine American actor, and Simon cashed in on that.

“It was something--a street sensibility--he had no knowledge of. It was like, ‘Great, man. I have this classical background. Here’s this Czech play, written in French, translated into English--and here are these Americans bringing this whole other thing.’ So that gave me added trust: He’s not destroying what I have, force-feeding me. He’s allowing me to breathe, too.”

St. Louis-born Rasche (who also began at Second City, then detoured to the “serious” stage--in “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” “The Shadow Box” and “Geniuses”--before landing the title role in the ABC-TV series “Sledge Hammer!”) agrees, noting that although their joint casting was happenstance, the comedy background is a big plus.

“The fourth wall is very thin,” he pointed out. “You’re always talking to the audience. But that (comedic banter) is something we’re both very comfortable with. And it’s one of the things that makes this play such a joy--that there’s so much to do : the music-hall stuff, the shtick, running up and down ladders, people flipping things; there’s love, lust, tears, shock, stabbings, hangings, imprisonment. . . . “

A sterling credit for their respective resumes? “It’s more than that,” Hankin said earnestly. “This is something you’re proud to be doing. “ Added Rasche: “This is not a means to an end, a way to get another job. It is a wonderful job.”