Inside the White House

A small but intriguing point in the ongoing abortion controversy inspired playwright Sharianne Greer to write her futuristic satire, “The First Bedroom,” which opens Friday at Ventura Court Theatre.

Two first ladies--Rosalyn Carter and Nancy Reagan--came out as pro-choice after their husbands left office. A third, Barbara Bush, declared she was pro-choice while George Bush was still president, but she and her views were quickly hidden behind official screens. The latter case gave Greer the basis for her story of a dysfunctional White House family at the millennium.

Best known for her role as Mother Nature in a TV commercial for margarine, Dena Dietrich plays the first lady--another strong woman you don’t fool with. Also familiar from roles on “NYPD Blue” and “Murphy Brown,” Dietrich has developed her own image of a first lady.

Her character grows throughout the satire, Dietrich says, “starting out being a typical sort of political wife. I keep having a picture of Pat Nixon--always standing behind her husband and always subservient to him. There’s that element in the character, a typical presidential helpmate who doesn’t do anything on her own. She does have issues of her own, but her job is to support the president, her husband.

“Then we see her grow and decide on really delicate issues that she’s been nurturing. They finally explode, and the pro-choice / pro-life issue is between the husband and wife.”

Although abortion is the central theme, Greer explores other presidential matters as well. She has conjured up one truly dysfunctional first family--and their efforts to hide their flaws from the invasive media make a strong statement about life in today’s fishbowl.

Brian Gaskill, who plays the president’s son, was co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s Rorschach Group and recently completed a popular stint on “All My Children.” He says his character is a prime example of the aimlessness of Generation X.

“All he knows is that he’s forced to be in an environment that doesn’t go along with what he thinks his family should be,” Gaskill says. “It sets up a situation that’s really not about abortion. It’s more about the larger issue of the paradox of society and politics, and family and politics.”

Gaskill translates the first family’s constant surveillance by the Secret Service as a metaphor for a more universal paranoia--a sort of “Big Brother is watching” scenario.

Director Allison Bergman, who has worked with the playwright on the project since its inception, says they agreed that they had to deal with abortion and other issues in a way that has personal and moral ramifications and, in this case, political ones as well.

“The play is set in the future,” Bergman says, “and in the future we probably still won’t have answers. We’ll still have to rack our brains and come up with some sort of compromise. This is in the guts of the country. In the play . . . any personal decision by the first family is going to cause ramifications throughout the country, and probably throughout the world.”

Gaskill doesn’t know that personal beliefs and official doctrine can ever be entirely reconciled.

“I don’t believe any of it can be solved,” he states. “What makes us amazing as a creation, as human beings, our individuality, is our tragic flaw. A philosophy can be beautiful on paper but can’t exist for a whole group of people at one time. We’re not worker ants.”

BE THERE

“The First Bedroom,” Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 27. $15. (818) 763-3856.