When words become action

“Once man comes onto the evolutionary landscape, choice enters the process and totally transforms it,” asserts Dakin Matthews’ refreshingly literate and articulate new play, “The Savannah Option,” at NoHo’s New Place Studio Theatre. What man brings to the table, he argues, is not just intelligence, will and language, but “an insatiable desire to elevate himself and everything around him.”

Matthews’ unapologetically heady two-character piece invites comparison with “My Dinner With Andre” in its spirited philosophical discourses on the subject of evolutionary psychology. If the protagonists’ extensive verbal sparring comes off as a bit academic at times, it’s understandable since both of them are, well, academics.

They’re also lovers caught up in an adulterous affair, which raises emotional stakes in their otherwise abstract debates.

In this double-cast production, the action unfolds over the course of a year in the home of Emilia (Sally Smythe, Julia Fletcher), a university professor in Savannah (a word ripe with multiple associations here -- the present-day Georgia city, an unseen character’s name, the ancient plains where primitive hunters stood erect for the first time). In a reversal of the feminine/artistic-versus-male/analytical stereotype, Manny (Geoffrey Wade, Michael Winters) is a poet whose work is a throwback to traditional romantic sonnet form. Introduced by Manny’s absent -- and ailing -- wife (who’s also Emilia’s friend and colleague), the pair engage in an intellectual flirtation over poetry and evolutionary psychology, which quickly becomes physical. In the reviewed performance, Smythe and Wade brought clarity to complex ideas and authenticity to complicated feelings with deceptive ease.

“The Savannah Option” is far too polite and civilized to cut as deeply or savagely into academic life as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Nevertheless, under Anne McNaughton’s insightful staging, the play’s arguments -- both intellectual and emotional -- build to an unexpectedly poignant convergence. The parallel story threads of midlife romance and philosophical discourse don’t always fit together seamlessly, but the piece never fails to engage.

The timing of its debut is impeccable, as evolution has suddenly become hotly topical. For anyone unsatisfied with the way the issue typically polarizes between the reductively mechanistic and the simplistically irrational, Matthews’ search for a humanistic middle ground is a welcome elevation of the debate.

-- Philip Brandes

“The Savannah Option,” New Place Studio Theatre, 4900 N. Vineland Ave., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 13. $18 and $20. (818) 506-8462. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

Women warriors with a ‘Project’

Thought-provoking topicality marks “The Female Terrorist Project” in its West Coast premiere at the Rude Guerrilla Theatre. Maverick playwright Ken Urban trains his distinctive eye on estrogenic anarchy in the post-Patriot Act landscape.

The fragmented narrative swings between first-person accounts from real-life extremists and protagonist Amelia (Deborah Conroy). This college historian introduces the ostensible precis while presenting her titular study: “Counterterrorism experts offer this advice -- shoot the women first.”

Amelia’s research alerts an omnipresent Department of Homeland Security. An airplane conversation with stranger Karen (Jessica Aldridge) leads Amelia to a radical feminist cell. By the end, Amelia has sacrificed more than her academic detachment, and so has America.

Urban charts this cautionary tale with hieratic restraint and conversational realism amid the depicted torture and described atrocities. Director-designer Dave Barton’s paint-splattered plastic drapes and renegade video montages are wholly serviceable, aided by co-lighting designer Dawn Hess and costumer Kathleen Hotmer.

Conroy inhabits Amelia by edgy degrees. Aldridge, Jennifer Cadena and the vivid Wendy Braun make invested activists. Natasha Atalla’s unflinching Palestinian, Karen Harris’ abortion clinic bomber, Sara Mashayekh’s deadpan Arab, Erika Tai’s enervated North Korean and Julia Emelin’s rending Chechen mother have surreal concentration. Lisa Sproul and Cynthia Huyck make solid authorities, while Jay Michael Fraley rips through multiple roles. Their intense playing counters Barton’s correct yet faintly sterile emphasis on understatement, which honors talk as often as shock, with some arid transitions and tonal shifts. Such reticence could prove helpful in reaching resistant minds. It may trouble those who need a screed to bleed.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Female Terrorist Project,” Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays; also 8 p.m. Feb. 24. Ends Feb. 26. Mature audiences. $15. (714) 547- 4688. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

*

Wide eyes watch ‘Bus Stop’ activity

Is William Inge’s 1955 “Bus Stop” still worth the fare? On the evidence of a passable new revival at Fremont Centre Theatre, the answer would be yes and no. Some of Inge’s dialogue retains a fine, laconic American rhythm, but a good bit of this single-set romantic comedy is almost cartoonishly corny.

That bit would be the central relationship between Bo (Lancer Dean Shull), a hotheaded cowboy who’s escorting nightclub singer Cherie (Shannon Vaughan Shull), over her objections, to his Montana ranch to be his wife. When their bus is snowbound near a small Kansas diner, they bring their childish struggles inside. Also on board is a classics-quoting, flask-swilling ex-professor in tweeds (Tom Moses) and a driver (Wade Freier) who pays a booty call on the diner’s proprietress (Sarah Zinsser). Playing breathless witness to all this sexual drama is teen waitress Elma (Julie Mann), who barely notices that she is the object of inappropriate attentions.

The best thing about director Matthew Solari’s faithful, plodding production, played on Brad Reyes’ oatmeal-gray set, is that wide-eyed Elma emerges as the play’s center. This isn’t just because Mann flawlessly registers Elma’s curious wonderment -- watch her face when Cherie refers offhandedly to “sex and lovin’ ” -- but because a teen’s-eye view actually makes some sense of the material’s more hokey, idealized elements. Elma still believes, and almost convinces us, that love happens at first sight, that opposites attract and that the crusty town sheriff (Bill Steele) knows best.

-- Rob Kendt

“Bus Stop,” Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 27. $20. (800) 595-4849. Running time: 2 hours.