Pinter Finds Ideal Design, Ambience

In two eerie one-acts at Santa Monica’s City Garage, the icy, elliptical world of Harold Pinter proves ideal territory for Frederique Michel’s signature atmospheric, confrontational staging and designer Charles A. Duncombe’s shadowy set and lighting ambience.

In the less affecting though handsomely mounted “The Dumb Waiter,” two hit men (sullen Justin Davanzo and bewildered Peter Lucas) await their next assignment in the neglected kitchen of a seedy hotel. Instead of marching orders, they keep receiving food requests through the creaky dumbwaiter. Michel punctuates the absurdity with vaguely Chaplinesque slapstick, which though deftly executed somewhat undercuts the sense of impending menace.

But pinpoint precision makes “The Basement” a startling descent into animal impulses lurking beneath the civilized veneer, as a brazenly libidinous couple (Stephen Pocock and Sigal Diamant) invade the flat of a donnish bachelor (Richard Grove). Attachments and allegiances keep shifting in increasingly unsettling combinations, until even their identities become exchangeable commodities. The underlying creepiness is inextricably mixed with so much eroticism it’s easy to understand the host’s monkish existence, but as Pinter makes clear, there is no secure retreat from our darker nature.

* “The Dumb Waiter” and “The Basement,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5:30 p.m. Ends June 29. $17.50 (Sundays pay-what-you-can). (310) 319-9939. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.