Perish the thought: Life as an ‘ordinary’

For Jason Taverner, it’s another day on top of the world. The singer and television star has just concluded another episode of his highly rated variety show, and as he exits the studio with his glamorous girlfriend on his arm, he only fleetingly contemplates the “ordinaries,” as he condescendingly thinks of them, who wait to snap his picture and shower him with love.

Hours later, he finds himself in a seedy hotel room, awaking into a world that has never heard of him. Suddenly, he too is ordinary.

This tantalizing scenario -- the ultimate Hollywood nightmare -- emerged from the overactive mind of the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, in the 1974 novel “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.”

An adaptation by Linda Hartinian proved to be a hit for the Evidence Room in 1999, and a terrifically imaginative revival now launches the group’s 10th anniversary season.

The story unfolds in Los Angeles in a dark, dangerous retro-future, when extensive dossiers are kept on all citizens and identification cards must be carried to ensure safe passage through daily life. Jason, who suddenly lacks even an identity, is in big trouble.

Technology looms oppressively large in the world envisioned by director Bart DeLorenzo and a crack design team. Videophone conversations and swirling, hallucinatory electronic images are projected cinematically across the spare set, seeming to swallow it whole. The air is alive with crackles and hums. And an ever-present narrator (experimental theater mainstay Tom Fitzpatrick) lurks at one side of the stage, intoning his words into a microphone cranked to ear-splitting volume.

Braving this world with the imperturbable cool of a film-noir hero, Jason (Joe Fria) seeks help from an assortment of glamour-pusses, femmes fatales and ordinary gals (Dorie Barton, Liz Davies, Lauren Campedelli, Tara Chocol and Colleen Kane). One or more of them might be his salvation, if only he could connect.

All the while, he’s tracked by a refined yet degenerate police “general” (Tony Maggio).

The dialogue is at times philosophical, yet can also be maddeningly mundane, and the plot makes not a lick of sense. Still, there’s a lot to ponder as we wait to see whether Jason will ever realize what’s truly important, what truly lasts.

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‘Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said’

Where: Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays

Ends: April 17

Price: $15 and $20

Contact: (213) 381-7118

Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes