Theater Review : ‘Potestad’: Powerful View of Powerlessness

A knock at the door, a flash of paperwork, and a child is taken away--never to be heard from again. No explanations, no resistance, no right of appeal.

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We take our civil liberties so much for granted that it’s hard enough to imagine life under a regime like the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, in which such disappearances were an everyday occurrence.

But “Potestad,” a devastating one-act by Argentine psychiatrist turned actor-playwright Eduardo Pavlovsky, takes us even further into this alien territory, exploring the psychological consequences for a population victimized by totalitarianism.

Grounding the nightmare alienation of Beckett in an all-too-factual social context, Pavlovsky’s is an urgent voice that deserves attention in any language (the piece was previously presented by Stages Theatre Center in Spanish and French). Now, thanks to Paul Verdier’s finely nuanced adaptation, English-speaking audiences can follow the play’s mental labyrinths of self-delusion, humiliation, and ultimate helplessness in the face of absolute power.

It’s a journey impossible to forget.

“Potestad” (whose loose translation “Paternity” belies the title’s complex associations--both familial and political--of power and authority) is primarily a monologue about a “disappeared” child recited by her adopted father (Joe Spano), a nameless doctor who recognized too late his paralyzing illusion that “these things only happen to others.”

His confession follows the elliptical path of truths too painful to reveal all at once. Working slowly inward from the most impersonal physical details, and punctuated with often humorous digressions, his narrative brings us at last to the harrowing afternoon when the authorities arrived to seize his daughter.

Most chilling of all is his reaction to the official who appeared at his door--not a thug, but a “classy guy” radiating compassion and total understanding. “I was so terribly moved that I felt like embracing him,” he admits.

Watching his daughter glide out the door in an air of harmony, even intimacy, the doctor’s own seduction by the human face of fascism is evident. In the end, there’s no mistaking the full depths of his own complicity--a warning to us all.

In a taut laser beam of a performance, Spano carefully doles out each revelation with weighted eloquence amid director Tony Abatemarco’s sparse staging, in which every gesture is a precious, telling commodity. Leslie Neale is a haunting, enigmatic presence as the nearly silent Tita to whom the doctor pours out what’s left of his soul.

While abstract presentation that leaves so much to the viewer’s interpretation often runs the risk of emotional distancing, the effect here is quite the reverse--as Pavlovsky puts it, it’s when we try to make connections ourselves that the full magnitude of human tragedy reveals itself.

* “Potestad,” Stages Theatre Center, 1540 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 9 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends June 26. $18. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.