STAGE REVIEW : Weighing Inequality of the Sexes : The show at the Burbank Little Theater deals with Italy, but its theme translates to male-dominated societies everywhere.

In an age when a lot of avant-garde political theater looks recycled, Italy’s married playwriting team, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, may hold the patent on being just beyond ordinary. However, their “Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo,” at Burbank Little Theatre, remains accessible, entertaining, sometimes heartbreaking and thoroughly theatrical.

The Actress (Helene McCardle) is getting ready to put on her evening’s charade. The Dresser (Mary Jo Kirwan) who assists her backstage, and sometimes on, chatters on in rich Italian, her boss barking back in even richer Italian. It’s a charming trick to disarm the audience for the surprise of her eventual entrance, speaking Romano-flavored English, and a very frank discussion of the heroic names that civilization has given to male genitalia, as opposed to the very unpoetic names allotted their female counterparts.

Do not be alarmed. There is method in the authors’ frankness. The Actress spends the rest of the evening balancing the same inequality between the sexes, particularly in Italian society, though her shafts pierce the facade of male-dominated societies everywhere.

The playwrights’ imagination revels in The Actress’ monologues. A whore bemoans her incarceration in a mental hospital. A working mother goes crazy getting baby and herself ready for another workday--until she remembers it’s Sunday. A mother, for love of her son, enters a world of hippies and political demonstrations, and there is a mesmeric retelling of the story of Medea.

Under the deeply toned direction of Nancy Chris Evans, McCardle also revels in this material. She is young and middle-aged, darkly desperate and giddily game by turns. McCardle couldn’t be better melding herself into the images as they flash across the stage, from a jump-suited mama splashing grated cheese on her baby instead of talcum, to a tortured stabbing victim twisted and huddled inside a narrow window, bemoaning a world that has no justice.

Wm. Law III’s interesting puzzle pieces of wall frame the performance, under Joe Witt’s warm, painterly lighting. The production gives breadth and color to a piece of theater that should be seen by anyone who feels that women are a long way from equality, and even more by those who mistakenly think they’ve made it.

Where and When

What: “Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo.”

Where: Burbank Little Theatre, George Izay Park, 1100 Clark Ave., Burbank.

Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 16.

Tickets: $12.

Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Call: (818) 954-9858.