THEATER : At the Core of Change : ‘Flight of the Penguin’ is a romantic comedy with a serious underbelly--an examination of racism.

It comes as a shock when Rudy discovers that his best friend Spot’s rabid racism suddenly offends him. But the trauma is compounded when he realizes that that same racism is struggling for survival in his own enlightened emotional matrix. Rudy and his friend Spot are white. Rudy has just fallen in love with African American Donna, and is very confused.

That confusion is at the core of Steve Apostolina’s comedy with a very serious underbelly, “Flight of the Penguin,” opening tonight at the Limelight Playhouse.

“Penguin” is a comedy. It takes place in what the playwright refers to as “the world’s largest bookstore” in Manhattan, a setting where he worked before moving to Los Angeles as an actor (films “The Heist” and “Blue Desert” and the hit “Creeps” at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood). Apostolina knows these people and how they tick.

While the playwright was working in the bookstore, a friend mentioned that there might be a play in some of the situations he’d encountered. The play that finally emerged, after Apostolina had written and directed a one-act version in a writer’s workshop at Hollywood’s Friends and Artists Theatre Ensemble, is the full-length version at the Limelight.

“I decided to write about these guys in the play who were sort of rough-around-the-edges kinds of guys,” Apostolina said. “But looks can be deceiving, and don’t judge books by their covers.” He decided to put them in a literary environment, the bookstore.

The contrast interested him, he said, “because they do talk rough. One of the guys in the store was that type of guy. I thought he was rude and crude, and he’s uneducated. Then I went back to New York this summer to do some more research, and the lady who was head of the store told me he’s a lawyer. I was judging a book by its cover. I was quick to judge.”

Judging a book by its cover, Apostolina believes, is at the core of racism. When he constructed his central story, about Rudy and his romance with Donna, and the disintegration of his lifelong friendship with Spot, he was delving into a subject that attracts and disturbs him.

“The play is about conditioning,” Apostolina said, “about the history of racism that has existed for so long that for some people it’s a habit, it’s their conditioning. And it still exists. Rudy needs to break that history, in a way. If racism is to be stopped, it has to be broken. Some people will say, ‘I know, I know what you’re saying about racism,’ but they still have it.”

Apostolina isn’t directing this full-length version of his play. He brought in Steven Ingrassia as a third eye, to shape and build the production. Ingrassia, whose production of “Lib” at Friends and Artists received numerous awards, was attracted by the sociopolitical ramifications of the play, but became even more engrossed in the personal drama.

Ingrassia said: “I was struck by things that I’ve always struggled with, which are change. What makes Rudy change and Spot not change? Rudy was brought up in exactly the same atmosphere as Spot. What makes him decide to make the change?

“The relationship with Donna, Spot’s racism and Rudy facing that same thing in himself, which is probably one of the strongest things in his background, is what kind of cracks the veneer for his deciding to step out and listen to his own voice.

“The play is about the lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about others, in order to perpetuate what’s safe in our lives. A change is always very dangerous for us. You have to be an incredibly brave person to step out and make the change. Rudy makes that statement for us.”

That step is Apostolina’s titular flight of the penguin.

Actor Tony Maggio, who received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award this year for his performance in Stages’ production of “La Bete” at the John Anson Ford Theatre, is playing Rudy. Rudy’s statement interested him in the role, but he was equally intrigued by the complexity in Rudy’s character.

Maggio explained: “Rudy is looked upon as the most together guy at the store. But there is this ambiguity, this question mark going on. This guy is really denying a lot of things about himself. There are people in the play who are more honest than he is. He’s not dealing with his problems, his political incorrectness. He’s not what he thinks he is, or what he tries to be.”

Apostolina, Ingrassia and Maggio comment on the humor in the play, humor that comes out of character, just as it is in character that the problems in the play are explored. There are no answers, but all three believe that presenting Rudy’s situation honestly might shed some light on reasons for its occurrence.

As Ingrassia noted: “It’s time to break through those things that are in us, become aware of them. You never change what your attitudes are, as much as you change what your response to those attitudes are.”

WHERE AND WHEN

* What: “Flight of the Penguin.”

* Location: Limelight Playhouse, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.

* Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Two matinees at 2 p.m. May 15 and 22. Ends May 29.

* Price: $15.

* Call: (818) 753-7726.