STAGE REVIEW : ‘Once in Doubt’: A Night at the Fights

There is almost no point in describing what goes on in Raymond J. Barry’s “Once in Doubt,” which opened Saturday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. In the world of plots, this play doesn’t qualify as having one. Already, it’s interesting.

Harry, a hyperkinetic abstract Expressionist (played by Barry), tries to slit his wrists, uses the blood from the aborted attempt to sprinkle a huge collage he is working on, tangles with his lover/wife Flo (Kim O’Kelley) and spews his thoughts like paint all over the audience in tense, volcanic outbursts.

Flo is a provoker/interceptor here. By turns, she loves, hates, is bored by, drawn to, impatient and angry with Harry. She sniffs, smolders, fumes and fans all of Harry’s flash points. An innocent neighbor, Mr. Wagner (Howard Schechter), drops in to check out the noise and gets sucked into the surreality.

That’s it. That’s all. That’s plenty. Barry, a key player in some of the major ensemble theater companies of the ‘60s and ‘70s (he was briefly with Julian Beck’s and Judith Molina’s Living Theater, Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysterical Theatre and did seven years with Joe Chaikin’s Open Theatre), claims to have written “Once in Doubt” in mid-life, after a couple of dysfunctional relationships. With the onset of doubt, no doubt.

His play smacks of Pinter at some intersection with Sam Shepard and the Flying Karamazovs. Flo and Harry toss things around with the abandon of Shepard’s brothers in “True West,” have at each other like his colliding lovers in “Fool for Love” and maintain their own peculiar verticality (under slippery circumstances) with the adroitness of the Karamazovs. The language, meanwhile, is arresting: pure poetry and/or pure Pinter with an American twist. But the wellspring is unadulterated Barry. “Once in Doubt” may have been subliminally influenced by those other guys (though not necessarily), but it’s a genuine article.

And hilarious. The orchestrated, overlapping action takes place in a room as blindingly white as an empty canvas (Douglas D. Smith did the stark set and lighting from an original design by Barry with director David Saint). Flo and Harry, and later Mr. Wagner, fill the void with fancy footwork that’s a match for their verbal assaults. The dueling dialogue, with its nonsequitur asides and conflicted characters crossing words in terminal noncommunication, makes for absurdist comedy with inspired reverberations.

How deep these reverberations go is a thoroughly personal matter (whatever rings your chimes). But director Saint has heightened the unreality of the moment by grounding its language in rapid-fire commotion and perpetual contradiction. It works like gangbusters. The production, which had its start at the Cast-at-the-Circle in Hollywood in January and also played the People’s Light and Theatre company this summer, has benefitted from those prior runs. It’s expertly calibrated, with some beautiful acting at the hands of Barry and O’Kelley.

As the warring lovers, they chew the scenery and each other, talk at, chase and knock each other down. A tea-pouring episode with nonstop monologue has a crack at becoming a classic. Barry vibrates with a magnetic, deliberately gross, simian energy, while O’Kelley quivers with deep-seated neuroses. By the time Schechter’s laid-back Mr. Wagner walks in, he can only pale in comparison. But don’t be fooled. His very blandness is what sets the pot to boiling.

Captured in that caldron is the common denominator of all complicated relationships: intense and inarticulate emotion, redolent with despair, exuberance, bile, humor, fury, feverishness, frustration, fear. Barry and company have created a roaring entertainment out of this perilous journey through the straits of creative life. The viewer in the end will want to determine its meaning, but getting there is all the fun.

At 514 S. Spring St., Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Until Jan. 7. Tickets: $22-$26; (213) 627-5599.