STAGE REVIEW : Vladimir and Estragon in ‘Enemy’ Territory

You know the phrase: “The enemy is us.” It’s something Italian actor Dario D’Ambrosi takes to heart.

With his colleague, Stefano Abbati, and his hourlong theater piece, “Enemy of Mine” (which ends its three-performance run tonight at Stages), D’Ambrosi offers an image of ourselves we may not want to see: man gone mad.

Heavy stuff, certainly. But the motive behind D’Ambrosi’s detailed re-creation of two mental patients in a padded cell is not to preach except by metaphor.

D’Ambrosi spent time in self-imposed confinement in a mental institution the better to observe his subjects. He puts his findings before us, warts and all. His aim is paradoxical: to defuse our fear and provoke our compassion.

Because the re-creation (presented in English by Stages in association with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Italian Heritage Culture Foundation) is so starkly meticulous, D’Ambrosi succeeds better perhaps than he anticipated. The effect is cumulative and subtle--as subtle as the wordplay in the piece’s Italian title, “ Nemico Mio ,” a quasi-acronym for “ Manicomio ,” the word for madhouse.

The first image startles.

It’s that of a large orange mushroom that turns out to be a man, Tomaso (Abbati), hiding under a deflated plastic raft--our first indication that the surrounding sand and crumpled light blue plastic at the lip of the stage is somebody’s vision of a beach.

In fact that beach lives in the mind of the other, nameless fellow (D’Ambrosi). He keeps telling Tomaso that they are going to the seaside. He stretches out on a towel, plays with the sand, comments on the giddy happiness of people at the shore. Tomaso goes along, hearing but not listening, concentrating instead on what looks like an empty sardine can which he places, like a shell, against his ear. Occasionally he emits a short, sharp cry.

These men are the real Vladimir and Estragon, endlessly waiting for Godot. Except that here D’Ambrosi does all the talking (lots of talking) and Abbati is lost in a hermetically sealed world that he shares with no one. Now and then he laughs or cries or gives out little screams, smears lipstick on his face or hides things under rocks. But his thoughts, whatever they may be, are permanently his.

Instead of the defoliated tree in Samuel Beckett’s “Godot,” there is a loudspeaker on a pole in the middle of this cell. It sometimes issues orders that terrify these patients. It is the real Godot--that indescribable someone who governs their lives from beyond.

The men fill the cell with their minutiae, their twitchings, their terrors, their outbursts, their sudden, uncontrolled tremors, but also their quasi-rational dreams, especially the talkative one who more clearly communicates his preoccupations. The other is beyond reach--or at least beyond our reach--and yet his silences can be amazingly eloquent, as when he stands poised on a rock, stripped down to his Jockey shorts, ready to dive wordlessly into that pale blue sea he thinks is out there. . . .

Abbati and D’Ambrosi are flawless in their portrayals, by turns vulnerable and dismaying, alienated and childlike. They make us recoil and want to embrace them. Elements of uninhibited sexuality and scatological preoccupation are handled with extraordinary skill, creating the desired effect without stooping to embarrassment or grotesquerie. An astonishing feat.

Yet ultimately the piece is a maverick, eluding definition as either theater or therapy, despite its powerful theatricality and its psychiatric connections. It is a kind of theatre verite designed to wake us up to something we spend the least possible time thinking about: the hair’s breadth that separates the so-called sane from the insane.

In a world where the distinctions between them have never been less clear, “Enemy of Mine” gives us plenty of pause.

Tonight at 8 p.m. is the final performance at 1540 N. McCadden Place in Hollywood , and it is reportedly sold out. For information on cancellations, call 213-465-1010. Tickets are $15.