Meaning lost in a muddle

In 1945, Erza Pound -- poet, anti-Semite, egomaniac -- was held in an Allied Army Prison in Italy while the U.S. government decided whether to try him for his pro-fascist radio broadcasts over Radio Rome.

In “Pound of Flesh” at the Odyssey Theatre, playwright Michael Peter Bolus imagines an encounter between Pound (Joel Polis) and his guard, Pvt. Cooper (David Mauer), a nice Michigan boy whose moral compass is as fixed and unyielding as the crease in his Army-issue trousers.

On Hans Pfleiderer’s stark cell room of a set, the men suss each other out. Pound needs an audience; Cooper gains cache from baby-sitting the notorious artist-cum-traitor. Welcome to a few rounds of Common Decency versus the Ubermensch.

As a director, Bolus displays a strong sense of physical geometry, moving two bodies around a stage to yield different emotional images. And each actor’s performance sets the other’s in relief: Mauer’s simplicity frames Polis’ verbal arias; Polis’ visceral aggression gives Mauer’s baby-faced passivity an oddly seductive power.

But Bolus’ writing hasn’t found a similar clarity. Pound was obsessed with strict poetic form, but his character exists in a play that wants to be too many things at once without managing to be any one of them effectively: an introduction to Pound’s art and politics; a meditation on genius and morality; a cozy two-hander about an unlikely friendship; an expressionistic portrait of a visionary losing his mind. The result is an occasionally interesting muddle that lacks the bracing focus evident in Pound’s best -- if troubling -- verse.

“Pound of Flesh” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Wednesdaysthrough Saturdays; call for Sunday times. Ends June 25. $20.50-$25. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes