Manic ‘Magic’ takes on post-9/11 hysteria

Given Saturday’s London Times report outlining the Bush administration’s assembling of potential execution chambers in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, the West Coast premiere of Gil Kofman’s “American Magic” at 2100 Square Feet seems eerily well-timed.

Kofman’s renegade investigation of endangered post-Sept. 11 civil liberties met with tepid reactions in its Manhattan production at Altered Stages earlier this year. Some observers found the outrageous symbolist narrative -- involving one Indian mentalist, two Secret Service caterers, an icy blond reactionary and a bomb-ravaged urban storefront -- less devastating than didactic.

Kofman’s profanity-laced voice is didactic, but it’s purposeful didacticism, unrepentant and self-assured. From the pre-show analysis of Islam (repeatedly halted by its NPR-style commentator’s laughing gaffes) to the closing “Little Drummer Boy” tableau, Kofman’s ferocity is frequently hysterical and finally unsettling.

Certainly, this Shock & Awe Productions staging aims for the audience’s collective gut, as director Matthew Wilder and his New York forces dispatch Kofman’s cautionary cacophony with awesome panache.

Wilder’s retailer’s-nightmare setting, Brian J. Lilienthal’s spectacular lighting, Antonia Carew-Watts’ cunning costumes, Leon Rothenberg’s taut sound and Lee Ranaldo’s winking music are terrifically effective.

So are the actors. Indrajit Sarkar’s hapless telepath exhibits absolute control, as does Lyndsay Rose Kane’s clarinet-voiced dominatrix; both are magnificent. Walter Murray and Sonny Perez make superb federal functionaries.

And the presidential addresses voiced by Ontological-Hysteric Theater founder Richard Foreman may constitute the funniest audio cameos since Meryl Streep’s phone-machine nudge in Wendy Wasserstein’s “Isn’t It Romantic?” Such witty agitprop fury commands attention even when treacle peeks over the polemic horizon, as in that misty finale. “American Magic” is hardly subtle, but it casts a lingering spell.

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‘American Magic’

Where: 2100 Square Feet Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., L.A.

When: Thursdays -Sundays, 8 p.m.

Ends: July 20

Price: $20

Contact: (323) 969-4848

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes