STAGE REVIEW : Euripides’ ‘Bacchae’: A Clash of Wills at the Odyssey : Ron Sossi devises a Theban world of his own, directing with flashy bravura.

One of the more intriguing things about Euripides’ “Bacchae” is the latitude for interpretation that it presents. Written late in life, when Euripides was self-exiled in Macedonia, and therefore at a time of personal discontent, the play can be seen in any number of ways: as a general reaction against authority, as a war between fundamentalism and liberalism, between one side of a personality and another, between men and gods (read man and his fate).

Broadly speaking, the production at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in West Los Angeles opts for the latter. It is long on theatrical effect, if not always clear in its intent. Director Ron Sossi has taken the clash of wills between the free-wheeling Dionysus ( sic ) (Jack Wetherall) and his imperious cousin Pentheus (Robert Thaler), master of Thebes, who repudiates Dionysus’ claim to divinity and shows us just how lethal such defiance can be.

No brief description can provide an adequate taste of the muscular writing. (The uncredited translation at the Odyssey is a compilation drawn from several texts.) The verbal jousting between the cousins turns ugly--and theatrical--when Dionysus touches his opponent with madness. It culminates in an exhortation led by Pentheus’ mother, Agave (Kristina Callahan), who, in crazed, dazed confusion, triumphantly brandishes her own son’s decapitated head.

It’s all there: blood, gore, bacchants, murder, mayhem, madness and cross-dressing. Following the example of Ariane Mnouchkine, Sossi invents a Theban world of his own, with an evocative score composed and performed by Andrea Centazzo on gongs, drums, cymbals, a xylophone and synthesizer. It serves as a spine for the play.

Sossi sets the action in “an ancient civilization some time in the distant past,” with a central archway on a set of neutral building blocks designed by Don Llewellyn and lit by Kathi O’Donohue.

Dina Duhl paints these Bacchae in tribal makeup, and costumer Neal San Teguns dresses them in an imaginative assortment of rags, with his Dionysus wearing anything from a gilt-edged Romanesque skirt to something that resembles a zoot suit. Only occasionally does Teguns go too far, making Pentheus look like a fringed drape in one instance, and Tiresias (Walt Beaver) like a walking bush. Too many vines can be too many vines.

Like so many messengers in Greek tragedy, Brent Hinkley is memorable as a bearer of particularly bad tidings. The women are impressive as a group, chanting and dancing with the formless abandon of whirling dervishes (choreography is by Noga Chomut), but their individual performances come across more by rote than by conviction.

Callahan can be stirring as the distracted Agave, particularly when the full horror of the final situation sets in, but it is George Murdock as her father, Cadmus, who has moments of elegiac majesty. He is an old man broken beyond repair. His helpless inability to touch his blood-soaked daughter as he bids her farewell (“your faring will be hard”) is far more moving--and damning--than words.

In the end, however, the play belongs to Wetherall and Thaler, who make their sparring a collision of immutable forces. They are stalking adversaries, proud lions, wily and shrewd, who circle and sniff one another--and for whom it is impossible to feel anything but the paradox of admiration and pity. Each actor gives a strong, showy performance that only rarely lapses into arbitrary flamboyance.

* “The Bacchae,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 7:30 p.m., except Feb. 28, March 14, 3 p.m. only. Ends March 14. $17.50-$21.50; (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.