Hooray for Hollyweird : OCC makes as much sense as Sam Shepard allows of his absurdist puzzle ‘Angel City.’

With its ongoing, serious, sometimes unsteady presentation of works by Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Christopher Durang (and the list goes on), Orange Coast College Repertory can rightfully claim that it is a true home for theater of the absurd in Orange County.

It’s in the absurdist context that this student-operated (and faculty-guided) company in Costa Mesa brings us Sam Shepard’s chaotic nightmare look at Hollywood, “Angel City.”

Seen by itself, without any sense of Shepard’s later, more developed work (the 1976 play predates “Curse of the Starving Class” and “Buried Child”) or without any understanding of this college group’s taste for the absurd, “Angel City” may seem like a mess.

Yet with all things taken into account, director Jeffrey Roma’s production is about as clear a take on this puzzle play as you could hope for.

While less dynamic in spirit than such previous revivals as one at the late, great Company Theatre in Los Angeles, Roma’s version opts for clarity over sensory bombardment.

An erstwhile screenwriter/medicine man from Northern California named Rabbit (Adam Gubman) has been signed to come up with a script that mogul Lanx (Timothy C. Todd) and director Wheeler (Coronado Romero) hope will drive audiences crazy, literally.

Rabbit is hemmed into a room with madman drummer Tympani (Darren Crane) and a secretary, Miss Scoons (Tiffany McClintock), who undergoes radical metamorphoses.

Crudely going for a theme about how Hollywood can turn people into monsters like Wheeler (who grows lizard-like skin), Shepard often misses his targets.

Still, in a play with a jumble of purposes (including bringing jazz improv to stage acting, as inspired by sax master Lester Young), Roma gives a clear reading through his generally assured actors.

Gubman makes an excellent center of action, a semi-innocent trying to make sense of crazy Tinseltown, while Romero and McClintock deliver many astonishing moments during their own creepy, chameleon-like warpings.

All of this is abetted by interesting music cues (from Astor Piazzola to Danny Elfman) and Leo Mouzo’s exquisite lights, which can shift from stark overexposure to rainbow colors in an instant.

BE THERE

“Angel City,” Orange Coast College Drama Lab Studio, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $5-$6. (714) 432-5640. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.