THEATER REVIEW : UCI Finds Poetry in Arresting Early One-Act by Fugard

South African playwright Athol Fugard spends his time these days writing about apartheid fallout, the results of the alleged abandonment of that heinous social order. But he made his name with the righteous anger behind the often poetic, and sometimes humorous, tone of his earlier work.

One such play is “Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act,” inspired by the vivid, real-life police photographs of a black man and a white woman after their discovery in a Cape Town love nest in 1972. The anger and bitter honesty of Fugard’s dramatic setting are vividly present in a production playing through Sunday at UC Irvine’s Village Theatre.

But more important, director Eli Simon has found the rich lyricism and the earthy humor in Fugard’s writing. He conducts the one-act drama like a chamber concerto, with a light touch that is often giddy in its affection for the human comedy and yet can reverberate with thundering effect when the action warrants.

Simon’s staging is impeccable, theatrically mesmerizing even on a bare stage dressed only with a blanket on the floor.

The director’s concept is expertly realized in the lighting design by Alison Brummer, the two nude characters often in the dimmest shadow in the darkened room where their love finds its fulfillment, moving like a musical theme into and out of the soft evening light filtering through the closed curtains of a single window.

The setting is a microcosm, its own world, that eventually explodes with dramatic force as police camera flashbulbs rip apart Fugard’s tender mood and the lovers’ sanctity.

Demetra Tseckares and Kelly Perine are stunning in the truth, passion, tenderness and compassion they realize in their performances, and for their expert dialects. Tseckares, as librarian Freida Joubert, has the gentle dependence of a spinster who has found her first love with a forbidden partner and a sense of the profound fire burning within her.

Perine’s joy and sense of humor as Errol Philander is only at the surface of his characterization. Behind it is the firm solidarity of a man dedicated to doing right and the integrity of his belief in the rightness of his love.

Freida and Errol speak worlds to each other, the small things of passing days, the wonder of the words of great thinkers, the simple games that lovers play to bridge moments of unease, the flights their love takes as it forms into impossible dreams.

It is all shattered by their arrest. And the arresting officer, Detective-Sergeant J. du Preez, speaks with the voice of white South Africa, with a self-satisfied authority that believes nothing is more important than forcing others to believe as you believe, to think as you think. This sense of complacent national bigotry is perfectly framed in the calm, pious performance of Todd Denning as Du Preez.

There is no credit for the subtle and evocative sound design, with authentic music and the faint sound of dogs barking in the distance, that helps create the world of Freida and Errol, a world that is to them so right, so ordained, that Errol speaks to every South African when he calls out, “They can’t interfere with God anymore!”

* “Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act,” Fine Arts Village Theatre, UC Irvine, Irvine. Saturday, 2 & 8 p.m., Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $6-$8. (714) 856-6616. Running time: 1 hours, 30 minutes.

Kelly Perine: Errol Philander Demetra Tseckares: Freida Joubert Todd Denning: Detective-Sergeant J. du Preez

A UC Irvine Drama Department production of Athol Fugard’s drama, presented by Stage 2 Productions. Directed by Eli Simon. Scenic design: Sarah Sullivan. Costume design: Kimberley M. Barnhardt. Lighting design: Alison Brummer. Vocal coach: Dudley Knight. Stage manager: Thyra Hartshorn.