STAGE REVIEWS : Evil’s Face Is Flawed in Cucucuevez’s ‘Strictly a Formality’ : The ending of the two-character drama doesn’t ring true, but the play does evoke the immorality that comes from corrupted power.

SANTA ANA —  Roy Conboy and Tom Silber’s “Strictly a Formality,” staged at Rancho Santiago College by the multicultural theater troupe Cucucuevez, tries to put a face on the banality of evil that has marked so many repressive modern regimes.

In the confrontation between a Latin American government interrogator and a female historian accused of subversive writing, we’re shown how dictatorships can destroy the individual to preserve themselves. There are echoes of Nazi Germany, as well as countries in Africa and Central and South America, in the play’s denunciations.

The two-character drama, developed at a 1980 American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco writing workshop, is not a flawless product, but Conboy (a Garden Grove playwright and Cucucuevez’s artistic director) and Silber (a UC Irvine graduate) do manage to evoke the immorality that comes from corrupted power.

Directed by Barbara Covington, “Strictly a Formality” is most disturbing when the interrogator (Ken Jensen) moves deliberately, smilingly forward in his deftly brutal questioning, which he blithely calls “conversation.” He wants the historian, Perrett (Susan Hinshaw), to sign a confession about a dissident book she’s supposedly written, but the real goal is stripping her of her courage and integrity. He uses physical violence, rape and mental torture to reach these ends.

Jensen doesn’t handle the play’s mildly surprising ending as well as he could--the interrogator becomes too undone, far from the calculating monster we’ve seen before--but his overall portrayal is effective. Jensen plays him as a man with missing parts, almost a sociopath who calmly enjoys his work without a tinge of conscience. He’s a master manipulator; even his teary reflections on his failed marriage seem like a ploy.

Hinshaw plays against his evil by showing Perrett’s unimpeachable ethics. Her Perrett does have a conscience, and no matter how the interrogator tries to foul it with innuendoes about her lesbianism or her disloyalty to her husband and her country, he can’t really touch her. She bends under the abuse but never breaks.

“Strictly a Formality” also bends, especially at the start of the second act when, after the interrogator has attacked and almost raped Perrett, they sit down for a cozy chat over a bottle of Scotch. Considering what has come before, the companionable aura is all wrong, and it throws you. Silber and Conboy may be trying to show the malleability of such situations, where the captive begins to identify with the captor, but it’s too jarring a switch.

The ending, which involves a plot twist, is also a head-shaker. Perrett gets to bask in martyrdom and, oddly, the interrogator is given something of a sympathetic coda, but it all comes across as implausible. Keeping in tune with the rest of the drama’s uncompromising tone would leave a greater impact.

‘Strictly a Formality’

A Cucucuevez production of Roy Conboy and Tom Silber’s drama. Directed by Barbara Covington. With Susan Hinshaw and Ken Jensen. Set and lighting by Kristan Clark. Costumes by Gina Davidson. Plays Friday through Sunday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Phillips Hall Little Theatre West at Rancho Santiago College, 17th and Bristol streets, Santa Ana. Tickets: $6 to $8. (714) 564-5669.