‘Steps’ toward a turning point

History forgotten is history repeated, and “All Steps Necessary,” Michael Halperin’s cautionary tale about the post-Kristallnacht doings at Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s house in 1938, leaves no trenchant chill untilled. This resolute Inkwell Theater production at 2100 Square Feet depicts a top-echelon Third Reich meeting in a Berlin shattered by the national wave of pogroms led by Nazi storm troopers three days earlier.

Based on the notes taken by Goering’s secretary (Addie Daddio), “All Steps Necessary” follows the field marshal (Richard V. Licata) as he orchestrates the crisis to consolidate his second-to-Hitler position and further disenfranchise Jews. Goering’s adversaries, Dr. Josef Goebbels (Michael Oberlander) and Gen. Reinhard Heydrich (Larry Reinhardt-Meyer), keep their genocidal agendas vested, barely.

Director Jim Ortlieb and his fervid crew treat this pivotal juncture with utmost gravity, pointing up current pertinence. Such phrases as “new world order” and gestures like the gift of a toy train car from Geoffrey Wade’s Dr. Hans Fishboeck send shudders through the audience, and the authentic documents that wallpaper Nathan Matheny’s set bespeak the highest intentions.

Convincingly costumed by Valerie Laven-Cooper, the players eschew dialects and visually suggest their real-life counterparts. Tom Carroll’s Dr. Ernst Woermann, Warren Davis’ Edouard Hilgard and Ben Shields’ Walther Funk complete a representative portrait.

Still, they can take adapted transcript only so far past “You Are There” contours into dramaturgy. When, at the epilogue, Ethan Wilde’s creepy Sgt. Gormann breaks the fourth wall, it feels like a final title card in an HBO film, which is where “All Steps Necessary” belongs.

“All Steps Necessary,” 2100 Square Feet Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; June 4, 7 p.m.. Ends June 4. $20. (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.