THEATER REVIEW : A Firm Grasp of ‘Unseen Hand’ : San Diego’s Blackfriars Theatre finds immediacy in Shepard’s tricky, backhanded look at the assassination of JFK.

More than 20 years before Oliver Stone tackled the potential conspiracies surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination on the movie screen, Sam Shepard did it for the stage.

Shepard’s “The Unseen Hand,” first produced in 1969, is a riff on the disturbing ripples in the minds of some who lived through--as one character puts it--the shooting of the President and the shooting of the man who allegedly shot the President.

The newly homeless Blackfriars Theatre--long known in San Diego for its bold, daring, sometimes controversial takes on contemporary themes--finds immediacy and bite in Shepard’s wildly imaginative play about an aged gunslinger brought back to youth to help an alien from the planet Nogo in a fight for freedom.

Blackfriars, one of the country’s smallest professional theaters, used to weave its magic at the tiny, primitive 78-seat Bristol Court Playhouse. Now it has staged this production in the seemingly incongruent setting of Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s elegant Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, a 250-seat space, in the heart of San Diego’s Gaslamp district.

But the company makes the site its own for this production, pulling out nearly 50 chairs, transforming the formal proscenium into a thrust stage with the dry brush of a Western desert highway spilling onto the first row.

At the heart of “The Unseen Hand” is the spirit of the Old West. It’s dying here as epitomized by Blue Morphan (Dan Halleck), a 120-year-old former gunslinger, now living in an abandoned ’52 Chevy with a JFK 284 license plate. Still salty, but tired and fearful of the highway police, Blue gets a visit from an alien named Willie (Linda Libby) with the imprint of a hand on her face.

Willie tells him a fantastic story of how her people on the planet Nogo are controlled by these imprints--every time they get a thought they are not supposed to have, the hand squeezes their brains, causing unbearable pain.

Willie wants Blue Morphan and his two dead gunslinging brothers--whom she obligingly brings back to life--to liberate her people. After a measure of disbelief, the brothers agree, but a chance visit of a disturbed cheerleader changes their plans in a “Wizard of Oz”-like twist when Willie realizes that guns are not necessary to eliminate the hand.

Still the question remains as to whether the brothers will figure out how to eliminate the “unseen hands”--as in political/social mind-control--that limit their thinking in their own society.

Halleck, the managing director of Blackfriars, won a Drama-Logue award for the 1982 production of this play in Los Angeles. Eleven years later, he fits the part like a second skin, rendering the most improbable fantasies believable.

*

Under the tight direction by the company’s artistic director, Ralph Elias, the rest of the ensemble charges Shepard’s script with passionate credibility. Libby, one of San Diego’s finest local actresses, makes Willie a freedom fighter to rally behind.

As Blue Morphan’s dead brothers brought back to life, Joel Dorr brings boyish charm to Cisco, while Kim Bennett portrays Sycamore as a grim, bottom-line, what’s-in-it-for-me type fighter. Randall Walton dissembles well as the cheerleader, simply called “The Kid.”

Lawrence Czoka’s music and sound design weaves hauntingly through John Blunt’s super-realistic in-your-face set. J.A. Roth’s lighting design deepens the mystery and the realities. Stacey Rae’s costumes offer a splendid mix of the fantastic--for Willie--the contemporary (Blue Morphan and cheerleader)--and turn-of-the-century gunslingers (Sycamore, Cisco).

It all adds up to a magical, thought-provoking, uncompromising piece of theater--a credit to the playwright and to this plucky, persistent little theater.

* “The Unseen Hand,” Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, 444 Fourth Ave., San Diego. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends May 23. $15-$18. (619)232-4088. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Dan Halleck Blue Morphan

Linda Libby: Willie

Joel Dorr: Cisco

Randall Walton: The Kid

Kim Bennett: Sycamore

A Blackfriars Theatre production. By Sam Shepard. Directed by Ralph Elias. Sets: John Blunt. Music and sound: Lawrence Czoka. Lights: J.A. Roth. Costumes: Stacey Rae. Mask design: Mirian Laubert. Stage manager: Rebecca Nachison.