‘Phantom Limbs’: a Dark Look at a Police State

The terrorists are the good guys in Charles Borkhuis’ “Phantom Limbs,” a dark comedy--with lots of light and sound effects--opening Friday at the Wallenboyd.

“It’s set sometime in the future in an unspecified country, where a police state has taken over” said director Michael Arabian, who recently completed an acting stint in John Patrick Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” at the Cast Theatre. “Three terrorists are holed up in a warehouse--and the police are using a series of game-playing techniques to drive them crazy, so that they’ll reveal vital information. In that society, the government uses drugs to control people; people who refuse to be controlled have been killed. In their place, robots have been created--robots who look just like the people. The terrorists are trying to fight the robots. . . .”

Arabian said “Limbs,” which was originally staged by Lee Breuer and Ruth Maleczech at Re Cher Chez Studio and later produced Off-Broadway by Theater of the Open Eye, is not as far-out as it sounds.

“If we went in certain directions, our government could fall into something like that. If Bork were elected to the Supreme Court, if (the Iran-Contra deal-makers) weren’t caught, if the FBI and CIA had all the freedom they wanted--how would that affect our democracy? Listening to the Contra hearings, that ideology, you realize that our democracy is not that safe. This (play) takes place in a government that had been a democracy. And don’t forget that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, our own government used mind-control drugs in its experiments.”

Take a sharp U-turn from Charles Borkhuis’ future to Doris Baizley’s less menacing satire of the pre-feminist ‘50s, “Mrs. California.” This backstage comedy centers on a local homemaking contest--in which the women compete in sewing an apron from an original pattern, preparing a meal and ironing a man’s white shirt. Originally presented by the Taper’s New Theatre for Now in 1985, a new version opens this weekend at the Grove Theatre in Garden Grove.

“Every time I see it done, I come up with new ideas,” said Baizley, who was in Boston last week to supervise the play’s opening at the Merrimac Theatre. “Basically, there’s more dialogue now. Dudley, the gas company sponsor, is less of a bad guy. He’s definitely a voice of the times, but his relationship with (contestant) Babs is a little muddier; there’s some attraction there, a little danger. When we did this at the Taper it was very, very new--and when it moved to the Coronet (in 1986) there were just minor changes. But it’s the little stuff that keeps you awake at night.”

At this point, however, Baizley said she may be ready to let go. “I have been writing a new play--although I can’t say anything about it now. And (20th Century) Fox optioned ‘Mrs. California,’ so I’ve been living off that money.”

She has also written a screenplay for “American Playhouse”--”Land of Little Rain,” about Mary Austin, a turn-of-the-century Los Angeles writer of Indian lore, and Charles Lummis, founder of the Southwest Museum--which airs on PBS June 1. Why such a long wait?

“I don’t know,” she said. “Apparently they think it’s a ‘summer’ story.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: As part of the UK/LA Festival ‘88, British-born, New York-based performer David Cale has arrived at Taper, Too with his monologue piece “The Redthroats,” on the adventures of young Steven Weird.

Said The Times’ Dan Sullivan: “The gesture and line are one. Cale knows how to inhabit a scene, how to cut from one character to another, how to make an audience wait. He is aided by Carol McDowall’s beautifully simple lighting design.”

From Maryl Jo Fox in the L.A. Weekly: “A superb ironist, Cale’s performance is to kill for. Smart, hip and very stylish, Cale’s three-part monologue (‘The Weirds--Steven at Age 11,’ ‘Swagger--Steven at Age 16’ and ‘Welcome to America--Steven at Age 20’) traces a young boy’s coming of age.”

Said the Daily News’ Daryl H. Miller: “Even before Cale begins to speak, he mesmerizes with wide, earnest eyes that entreat his audience to look and listen. . . . His stage is empty except for a single chair. Yet he fills the space with a large cast of characters and some incredible staged images.”

Drama-Logue’s F. Kathleen Foley found “whimsy aplenty in this funny, wrenching show. . . . The artistry lies in Cale’s descriptions, his inventive, surreal accounts of the unacknowledged exigencies of everyday life, the violence that can result from repression, and the humor that can arise from the most devastating events.”