‘Conquest’ Turns Out to Be More Than History Lesson

History class was never like this.

“The Conquest of the New World,” the new show by Empire Red Lip at Glaxa Studios, prepares the viewer for the tale of the Spanish explorer Cortes. Each segment is preceded by a chapter heading of certain events from Cortes’ travels (e.g., “In which Juan Sedano, richest man in Cortes’ fleet, buys a Negro”). The subtitle is “A Museum and History Lesson.”

But artistic director John Steppling has more than history on his mind.

The nine short playlets in “Conquest” use the Cortes story as an ironic frame for a cool, cerebral satire of that perennial oxymoron, American culture. While not ideal fare for the timid or irregular theatergoer, this deft little show consistently defies expectations of both conventional theater and political correctness.

A lesser show might have emphasized what Bertrand Russell called “the nobility of the oppressed.” But Steppling and company take a look at the other side: the vacuous banality of “the oppressors.”

The viewer seems meant to feel a little unsettled here. The action is staged against a false proscenium painted to resemble a huge wooden frame. And keeping sentry over the collection is a pugnacious security guard (Tommy Barrett), who reads Soldier of Fortune magazine and likes to chase away loiterers.

The writing--as directed by Steppling, Bernard Goldberg, Wes Walker and Guy Zimmerman--is equally unsettling.

The strongest piece is perhaps Sissy Boyd’s grotesque of a Brahmin family, a kind of nightmare revision of A.R. Gurney’s “The Cocktail Hour.” Ice-princess matriarch Lovely Mummy (Denise Poirier) and mute dad Jack (Mickey Swenson) share a discourse chiefly limited to booze: She jingles her cocktail glass, and he refills it. Meanwhile, neglected daughter Mimsy (Sarah Koskoff) slips into the nonsense rhymes of incipient madness.

Equally penetrating are Walker’s chilling, sadomasochistic encounter between a Metro Rail planner (Mike Wiles) and his vulgar boss (Chris Kelley), and Koskoff’s backyard-barbecue dialectic (“This potato salad rocks!”) between two hopelessly dunderheaded suburbanites (Mark Fite and Swenson).

At times “Conquest” can drift into frustrating opacity; Sharon Yablon’s opening sketch, for instance, is too elliptical to make its point. And some of the plays seem half-formed, such as Goldberg’s piece about a woman obsessed with the mechanical parts of her refrigerator.

But such defects seldom mar the brave new world mapped out by this intriguing show.

* “The Conquest of the New World,” Glaxa Studios, 3707 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends July 21. $10. (213) 663-5295. Running time: 2 hours.