'Las Paredes' at GALA: A Close-In Dislocation

The Young Man (Carlos Castillo) is tormented by the Investigator (Manuel Cabrera-Santos, left) and Attendant (Cynthia Benjamin) in GALA's production. (By Daniel Tosconis -- Gala Hispanic Theatre)

Attention all claustrophobes: Steer clear of Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro's "Las Paredes" ("The Walls"), the current offering from GALA Hispanic Theatre. This grim political parable, which serves up a standard-issue, quasi-absurdist vision of totalitarianism, pivots on an image sure to give you the heebie-jeebies: a bedroom -- or is it a prison cell? -- with walls that gradually contract, crushing the terrified occupant.

It's a scenario that's unsettling enough, even for those of us whose neuroses lie in other directions, and the hint of horror-movie plotting lends texture to Gambaro's fable. In the GALA production, director Gabriel García and set designer Guillermo de la Torre capably dole out menacing atmospherics while preserving the emphasis on the banality of evil. Ultimately, though, neither the director and designers nor the three persuasive performers make "The Walls" stand out from other literary works and entertainments with similar themes.

Written in the mid-1960s, "The Walls" tells of the Young Man, who finds himself incarcerated, for reasons that are never clear, in a building echoing with screams. Tending and tormenting him are two eccentric civil servants -- the opera-loving Investigator and his thuggish subordinate, the Attendant. The duo's talk of policy and national security, and the ominous references to doings elsewhere in the building, evoke the unnamed country's despotic political regime.

It's a picture reminiscent of Kafka, and certain Harold Pinter plays, or even the television series "The Prisoner." That's not to accuse Gambaro of being derivative -- indeed, she is known as a playwright drawing specifically on Argentina's traumatic 20th-century political experiences. For American audiences in 2007, though, a production of "The Walls" (GALA's is billed as the U.S. Spanish-language premiere) recalls other artworks that traffic in similar paranoia. And compared with the nightmarish whimsy of, say, Kafka's "The Trial," Gambaro's drama feels a little flat.

Still, the play has certain resonance: The authoritarian culture that preys upon the Young Man calls to mind the debates over Guantanamo Bay detainees and other post-9/11 American security developments.

In any case, it's the set, not the dialogue, that yields the greatest sense of movement in this production. At the start of the play, the Young Man -- played by Carlos Castillo as an amiable boy-next-door type -- stumbles into a small room with color-coordinated furnishings: a bed with a red bedspread, a matching upholstered chair, a ceiling lamp with a red shade. A bright-toned painting jazzes up the wall.

For the next hour or so, the Attendant and Investigator -- engagingly rendered as a good-cop-bad-cop act by Cynthia Benjamin and Manuel Cabrera-Santos -- whittle away at their victim's psyche. When Act 2 opens, the room is creepily transformed: The bed is a filthy pallet; the light, a bare bulb; the painting is gone, and so on. Gray clothes have also replaced the characters' more colorful attire (fatigues for the Attendant, Gap-style casual for the others; Alessandra D'Ovidio designed the costumes).

The striking visual transformation suggests totalitarianism's potential for grinding down the human spirit.

Ayun Fedorcha's theatrical, ever-shifting lighting, which sometimes pinions the Young Man in a spotlight, intensifies the mood of uncertainty and victimization. David Crandall contributes a soundscape of eerie industrial screeches laced with opera snippets that, in an excellent touch, occasionally sound as if they're being broadcast down an elevator shaft.

But it's de la Torre who scores the biggest coup with his walls, whose mechanical movements speak of the remorseless workings of despotism.

Las Paredes (The Walls), by Griselda Gambaro. Directed by Gabriel García; fight choreographer, Monalisa Arias. In Spanish with English surtitles (English translation by Egla Morales Blouin). About two hours. Through Feb. 25 at GALA Theatre-Tivoli, 3333 14th St. NW. Call 800-494-8497 or visit http://www.galatheatre.org.