‘Visions’ Captures Love’s Twists and Turns

Throughout “Visions and Lovers,” two original one-acts about male-female relations, writer-director Milton Katselas worships devoutly if relentlessly at the shrine of the senses. In their sometimes confrontational, occasionally harmonious and always passionate exchanges, two pairs of actors writhe, whirl, conjoin and repel each other with the choreographed intensity of a Bob Fosse dance number.

Appropriately, the opening sequence (“Part I”) is about two dancers--director-choreographer Alexi (Richard Lawson) and his star and lover, Jacqueline (Suzzanne Douglas), who disappeared three days before the opening of their company’s new piece. Trying to penetrate her inscrutable motives for the desertion, Alexi hops around the stage with amusing exasperation that escalates into revelation as his inquiry dredges up his own unexamined failures in the relationship.

Clearly conceived as a thematically related companion piece, the longer “Part II” stars Miguel Ferrer and Jenna Elfman in the chronicle of a stormy affair between a troubled, unnamed writer and the equally anonymous object of his obsession, a leggy, uninhibited supermodel whose nude photo shoots drive him crazy with jealousy. Their separations only inflame their lust--and his dark, violent fantasies that terrify him.

These steamy sequences demand--and receive--much energy and commitment from the hard-working performers. Maintaining chemistry through all those groping gyrations is no cakewalk. The sheer physicality is impressive, especially from Elfman--star of the TV comedy series “Dharma & Greg”--and Douglas, who also face a tougher dramatic challenge. Their characters are ciphers who remain maddeningly unknowable--erotic blank screens for the projection of the men’s desires and terrors.

While the dancers repeatedly bond and then break apart, or the writer wrestles with the same recurring demons, the physical movement becomes more than an embellishment--it is the primary medium through which these characters communicate. Rarely is a line of dialogue delivered without an accompanying contortion.

The stories are paper-thin, however. Relying heavily on extended monologues delivered in emotional torrents, Katselas has crafted textbook showcases in a performance style well-suited to television. But the unwavering intensity clashes with the intimacy and stark bare stage of Los Feliz’s Skylight Theatre. The only breaks come from asides to the audience, which in almost every case detract from an already tenuous naturalism (the exception is a wry self-deprecation from Ferrer).

BE THERE

“Visions and Lovers,” Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends April 11. Alternate cast members sometimes perform. $20. (310) 659-4169. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.