STAGE REVIEW : The Chaikin Presence at Taper, Too

Suppose that a painter suffered a blow on the head that erased his ability to see in colors, but not in black and white. What would his future work be like?

Narrower in range but no less interesting, if the artist’s vision was still there. In the same way, actor Joseph Chaikin can still fascinate an audience despite a new slowness with language, the result of a stroke suffered in 1984.

Chaikin’s story was the basis for a play at the Mark Taper Forum last season, Jean Claude Van Itallie’s “The Traveller.” But it’s much more satisfying to have our pilgrim back at Taper, Too, to tell his story himself.

Not literally. That would be inartistic. Chaikin’s one-man show comprises two vignettes. “Struck Dumb,” written by Van Itallie and Chaikin, suggests a parallel between a recovering stroke victim and a bemused emigre who can’t quite remember the old country. “The War in Heaven,” by Chaikin and Sam Shepard, uses the metaphor of an angel falling back into a clumsy, mortal world.

The latter piece started as a radio play and may need the disembodying of that medium for its full effect. It’s not as easy to visualize principalities and powers with Chaikin visibly sitting there, reading the words off the music stand.

He reads them beautifully, however. The actor is on top of both texts, his ear and his wit undiminished. When he hits a “wrong” verbal note, you can’t be sure it wasn’t intended--a kind of pun on the word for which the character was reaching. There hasn’t been a wilier recitalist since Mabel Mercer.

Chaikin’s presence is just as full as when he presented two other monologues by Shepard at Taper, Too, in 1980: “Tongues” and “Savage Love.” But the tonality is different. Those were about dread. These are about wonder. When an earthquake shakes the brain, and you stumble out alive, there’s an odd exhilaration in it.

Then, like a baby, you begin, all over again, to learn. The man in “Struck Dumb” revels in music, these melting sounds coming from a little box called a--what?

His living space, devised by Rob Murphy, is a hanging cavern of lists and signs, devices to drive home the connection between the word and the thing. A magical business, language. God or guard ? Violin or violence ? It’s an embarrassment of riches.

Please, God, our hero had once prayed: Give me something different. But he hadn’t figured--here, one of Chaikin’s deadpan takes--that it would be this different. Be careful what you pray for!

All this time we’re thinking of one of Beckett’s monologues, perhaps “Krapp’s Last Tape.” But where Krapp is defined by those old tapes--if only he could erase them!--this character is doping out the world all over again, with the intensity of a Talmudic scholar.

The image is gallant and droll. With the help of director Robert Woodruff, not a man for sentimentality, Chaikin keeps it in perfect focus. He is in a new place, but he remains one of the most interesting actors of his time.

Closes April 10. Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, with Saturday matinees at 2:30 p.m. Tickets $15. John Anson Ford Theatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East; (213) 972-7204.

‘STRUCK DUMB’ and ‘THE WAR IN HEAVEN’

Two pieces performed by Joseph Chaikin at Taper, Too. “Struck Dumb” written by Chaikin and Jean-Claude Van Itallie; “The War in Heaven” by Chaikin and Sam Shepard. Director Robert Woodruff. Percussionist Danny Frankel. Set and lighting design Rob Murphy. Costumes Margaret Anne Dunn. Sound Stephen Shaffer, Production stage design Wally Williams. Assistant to the director Michelle Hensley. Production assistant Chris Lomaka.