Mariano Pensotti’s The Past Is a Grotesque Animal (El Pasado es un Animal Grotesco), at REDCAT last week, employs a theatrical storytelling style that I don’t previously recall seeing.

Pilar Gamboa, Javier Lorenzo, María Ines Sancerni and Santiago Gobernori in "The Past is a Grotesque Animal"

Mariana Tirantte’s set is a circular plywood turntable divided into four little stages – and it never stops turning during the nearly two hours of the performance.

Four characters are the main focal points. In a total of 61 brief scenes that segue from one little stage to the next to the next to the next, there are only two scenes in which two of the main characters interact with each other – and these are only superficial encounters.

Two men and two women play all the roles. Each of them portrays not only one of the major characters but also many minor roles in the stories of the other characters – and all of them take turns narrating with the help of a microphone. In fact, most of the script is narrated, with only a relatively few moments in which the characters themselves speak the lines we’re supposed to hear.

Of course we’ve seen other productions in which each actor plays several roles and shares the narration – Brecht, Paul Sills’ Story Theatre and David Edgar’s adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby set off a wave of such plays in the last decades of the 20^th century.

But I don’t recall that any such productions took place on a turntable that keeps revolving – slowly, but steadily. Metaphorically, it serves the purpose of a ticking clock, but it’s a much more up-to-date analogy for the perpetual march of time than a clock face, in an era when clock faces have been largely superseded by numbers on digital screens. It’s a device that could easily be adapted to serve many different kinds of stories and subjects.

Javier Lorenzo

This play’s four stories all take place during the decade from 1999 to 2009, and all of the main characters are Argentinians, aging from 25 to 35, who stray so far from their initial aspirations for young adulthood that, when they look back, they hardly recognize their former selves. El pasado es un animal grotesco, they conclude, borrowing a phrase from a song by the U.S. indie band Of Montreal. While this may sound grim, the production is dotted with amusing or at least ironic observations and revelations – spoken in Spanish, with English translations appearing on two screens on each side of the stage.

Other than the use of the turntable, the style is fairly bare-bones – the backstage changes of the mini-sets have to happen quickly, given the unending spinning of the turntable. So even while the four narratives create a density of plot, almost like a 19^th century novel (and Pensotti quotes Balzac in his director’s notes), the sparse set design and the ever-changing focus among the four barely-overlapping stories on the multi-tasking turntable feels very much a part of the 21^st century.

If it’s safe to assume that the REDCAT audience was heavily populated with aspiring youngish artists, then this was an ideal REDCAT show. Three of the four main characters have artistic ambitions of one form or another, but they can’t earn a living wage from them. The most ambitious and successful of these, a would-be filmmaker, even resorts to appearing as an actor in a Hollywood-shot commercial, which is never broadcast.

Santiago Gobernori, María Ines Sancerni and Pilar Gamboa

The production was all too briefly at REDCAT, last Thursday through Sunday. I’d like to be able to tell you where you might go to catch it soon, but LA was the last stop on a seven-city North American tour that began only in January. It would be great to see it return here for a longer run – is there any other city in the world that has a larger population of would-be filmmakers, actors and other kinds of artists?

If it had been part of a second RADAR L.A. festival, it would have had a longer run – and it would have been one of the festival’s highlights. It seems likely that if a second RADAR L.A. festival were happening in 2012, on the heels of last year’s successful launch, we would have heard of it by now. In the meantime, those who are interested in seeing some international theater should visit the REDCAT website from time to time to see what’s happening there.

*All The Past is a Grotesque Animal production photos by Steven Gunther

THE PAST IS ALSO A GROTESQUE ANIMAL IN BETH HENLEY’S THE JACKSONIAN, at the Geffen Playhouse. But this is a more distant past – 1964, in a Jackson, Mississippi that is undergoing the wrenching changes involved in forced desegregation. The playwright lived there at the time – her high school, which is briefly mentioned in the script, was being desegregated when she was a senior in 1970. Also during her high school years, Henley’s parents were splitting. In other words, at the same time that the community of Jackson was being forced to integrate, her family was disintegrating.

Amy Madigan and Ed Harris in "The Jacksonian"

Henley’s attention isn’t on the desegregation process itself – there are, in fact, no black characters in The Jacksonian. It’s about the “swamp” of hatred and hypocrisy in which a group of white characters is steeped.

Her challenge here was how best to balance the private story of these largely tormented characters (who are not autobiographical per se) and the public story of the larger Mississippi culture. She chose to restrict her canvas severely – the play is about 85 minutes with no intermission, and she concentrates on the private more than the public.

We hear about a crime for which a black man has been unfairly targeted, and one of the white characters turns out to be the actual perp. The central character of a dentist (Ed Harris) apparently disapproves of his father’s KKK sentiments, and he speaks about an unseen white patient who apparently had bragged about his role in the bombing of a black church. But most of these references are allusive hints – we hear pure-grade racism spouted only by Glenne Headly’s white motel maid.

That’s because Henley’s primary focus is the disintegrating family, not the integrating culture. And even with the family, Henley often adopts a mordant sense of humor that distances us somewhat from the pain.

Bill Pullman and Bess Rous

The result, as directed by Robert Falls with an almost all-star cast, is a small play, beautifully written and performed and staged, but one that avoids the bigger challenge of trying to illustrate the public sphere as well as it depicts the private agonies of these characters.

Does Henley think that there aren’t enough plays about dysfunctional families falling apart? This particular family could have been doomed in many eras and places other than 1964 Mississippi. The seed of something bigger, less predictable, lies within Henley’s setting of her play in Jackson in 1964, but she hasn’t allowed that seed to grow.

By the way, could someone explain why Henley’s play is in the Geffen’s smaller Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater instead of the Geffen’s mainstage, the Gil Cates Theater? Yes, the Cates was occupied by Red-Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins through Feb. 19 — but why? Red-Hot Patriot was virtually a solo show, and it seemingly would have been a much more logical choice for the Skirball Kenis.

True, I’m criticizing Henley’s play for not being as big as it might have been, but let me be clear – The Jacksonian is still a lot bigger and less predictable than Red-Hot Patriot. Surely its combination of starry names (Bill Pullman and Amy Madigan in addition to Harris and Headly) is potentially a bigger draw that the solitary star name (Kathleen Turner) in Red-Hot Patriot. Perhaps Henley herself preferred the smaller space for her small-scale piece, but I wish someone had, early in the process, encouraged her to work on a scale befitting the bigger venue.

The Jacksonian, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Tues-Fri 8 pm, Sat 3 and 8 pm, Sun 2 and 7 pm. Closes March 25. www.geffenplayhouse.com. 310-208-5454.