STAGE REVIEWS : Festival ’90 : OPEN FESTIVAL : ‘Semi-Automatic II’: Avant-Garde Puzzle

The Butane Group begins its “Semi-Automatic II” with a giggling sendup of student discounts to a major theater, then uses an image from that institution as part of its springboard into a surrealistic, almost cubistic and frequently hysterical collage of spiritual, theatrical and actual crimes against women. They trick us with a laugh into entering the labyrinthine and tortuous landscape of their vision. Its a trip we’re glad we didn’t miss.

On an almost bare stage (three tables, some chairs, two free-standing doorways) in UCLA’s Royce 190, director Noel Salzman creates a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of ideas, actions and mystical innuendo that eventually fit together--here as farce (with slamming doors), here as intratheatrical inference, there as Cocteauesque multiple reality, there as Theater of the Absurd. It shouldn’t all fit as tightly as it does, and we admire Salzman for having made it work.

The piece was conceived by Salzman and Laural Meade (“text arrangement and dramaturgy” is by Mead) but the visual melodies and counterpoint are Salzman’s. His is a fresh voice that reminds us how original--and entertaining--the avant-garde can sometimes be.

At Royce Hall 190, UCLA Campus; Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m. Donations; (213) 208-5657.