In his unsettling view of a future England, British playwright, director, poet, screenwriter, and theorist Edward Bond conjures up
impressions of Orwell. In their first U.S. productions, Bond's one-acts "The Balancing Act" and "Chair," given an umbrella title by Rude Guerrilla, feel tailor-made for the troupe and its history of staging issues-oriented material that is intellectually and politically provocative.

Overtly a black comedy, 2003's "The Balancing Act" depicts a bleak, late-21st-century England. Its focus is a seemingly "potty" woman named Viv, who guards a spot on the floor of a condemned building, unswervingly convinced that if it is stepped on, the end of the world will ensue. When she dies during the building's demolition, the play follows her bereaved boyfriend, Nelson, as he encounters various oddballs in a series of scenes that ring of Theatre of the Absurd. A grandly satisfying payoff comes in the final scene, in which the Demolition Foreman (Rick Kopps), three years later, has become the new guardian of "the spot," completing a circuit that for several scenes appears to have gone astray. Irony reigns within the idea that a man whose career is destruction holds the world's fate in his hands, and grim reality colors his sober assessment of an "unbalanced" world ruled by anarchy.

More grave and unnerving is "Chair" (2000). Set in 2077, it's a parable that underscores the old bromide "No good deed goes unpunished," as Alice (Brenda Kenworthy) provides a soldier, who is transporting a prisoner outside her flat, a chair on which to sit.
For her kind act, her life is dismantled by England's now-repressive regime, destroying her and Billy (Alexander Price), the helpless waif she has mothered since he was a child.

Aided by Steven Parker's costumes and dialect coaching, Lindsey Suits' lighting, and Tom Cavnar's sound design, Scott Barber's
casting and direction underscore Bond's arch humor and his cautionary warnings.

Presented by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company at the Empire Theatre,
202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, CA 92701.

Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. (Also Thu. 8 p.m. Aug. 9.) Jul. 20-
Aug. 11.

(714) 547-4688. www.rudeguerrilla.org.

British playwright Edward Bond mixes laughter with fear, so it's only fitting that Rude Guerrilla Theater Company would bring together two of his one-act plays mixing comedic and dramatic under the fitting umbrella title "It's the End of the World as We Know It."

Both "The Balancing Act," a black comedy, and the more serious "Chair" evoke a disquieting sense of unease. In bringing
about the plays' first stagings in the United States, Rude Guerrilla adds to a resume stacked with issues-oriented, intellectually and
politically provocative plays.

In his unsettling view of a bleak England several decades from now, Bond – a poet, theorist, theater director and screenwriter
("Walkabout") – merges the daffy humor of Monty Python with the Theatre of the Absurd. Add the flavor of Orwell, Huxley and
Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," along with dashes of Existentialism, and you've got the essence of "The Balancing Act" and "Chair."

The former prompts you to laugh, if only so you won't recognize a message easily cried over. The latter depicts a society so gripped
with fear that it operates in a state of paralysis.

>From 2003, "The Balancing Act" focuses on Viv (Jennifer Bridge), supposedly a crackpot for her belief that if anyone steps on a
certain spot on the floor of her home inside a condemned building, the world will come to a terrifying end.

After her death in the building's demolition, "Act" follows her bereaved boyfriend, Nelson (Julian Draven), as he meets, in a parade
of almost Dickensian eccentrics: a DSS Officer (Melissa Petro), who grills the silent, distraught Nelson; a Thief (David Beatty), who
pretends to be one-legged; and an Old Woman (Sally Norton), who insists Nelson is the long-lost son she abandoned on the sidewalk 20 years earlier.

Things come full circle when we realize that, three years later, the Foreman (Rick Kopps) who brought down Viv's building sees himself as continuing her mission. The Old Woman insists that "the whole world don't exist"; echoing this, the Foreman explains to his wife (Karen Harris) that the world is "unbalanced" and "in a bad state."

"Anarchy creeps in everywhere," he tells her before a denouement whose irony is only underscored by the sight of someone whose career is destruction holding the world's fate in his hands.

As funny as Scott Barber's staging may be, it's also sobering, colored by a grim reality. Bridge's Viv is a sad, distant, wistful
shell of a person suffering apocalyptic nightmares. Draven is a bereft Nelson, understanding some of Viv's insights too late.

Petro's character, a crisp Oxbridge sort in a sea of Cockney accents, feels only contempt for empathetic behavior. Beatty's Thief is like a warped version of Bert the Chimney Sweep. As the Foreman's Wife, Harris is dryly funny. Capturing Bond's off-the-wall irony, Kopps is even funnier.

Barber's staging of 2000's "Chair" catches a more ruminative Bond and a more sinister world in which "no good deed goes unpunished."

Watching from her window, Alice (Brenda Kenworthy) sees a Soldier (Paul Knox) transporting a Prisoner (Norton) endlessly waiting at a bus stop. Feeling compassion, she brings him a chair.

For her kindness, Alice is grilled by a Welfare Officer (Jessica Topliff) whose imperious inquiry leads to the dismantling of Alice's
life. Decimated in the process is Billy (Alexander Price), the helpless simpleton Alice has mothered since he was a child.

Even as her own life unravels, Kenworthy's Alice is level-headed and concerned for others. Topliff is urgent and self-satisfied. Like "The Balancing Act's" DSS Officer, her character is a bureaucrat who uses the system to punish anyone suspected of wrongdoing.

Whether through Knox's fearful, paranoid Soldier or Price's Billy, who devolves from childlike young adult to a mass of sobs and panic attacks, the face of fear is well-represented here, offering viewers plenty upon which to reflect.

Even while emphasizing Bond's duality – arch humor tied to cautionary warnings – Barber and company don't overplay their hand. Lindsey Suits' lighting design, Tom Cavnar's sound scheme and Steven Parker's costumes depict a future world eerily not too dissimilar to our own in the here and now.

Freelance writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984.

Through a glass, rudely. It's about time Rude Guerrilla Theatre Co. gave us It's the End of the World As We Know It. That's what the company is calling its U.S. premieres of two one-acts by Edward Bond.

Since exploding onto the English theater in the early '60s, Bond has prowled the grimmest edges of British theater like a snarling
junkyard dog. Instead of the lofty speechmaking and easily comprehensible, linear plays of respectable stiff-upper-lip English
playwrights, he's favored form-tweaking, whiff-of-the-Apocalypse plays that, for 40 years, have argued that the world is going to
shit in large part because so many people believe in the inherent legitimacy of the status quo.

His radicalism and stylistic invention made him big news in British drama until the early '80s and the rise of Dame Thatcher and fears
of cuts in government arts subsidies. Fed up with the commercial British stage, Bond chose a form of self-exile, working primarily
with continental European companies and a renowned children's education theater in Birmingham, England.

Though not big in the West End, Bond is a patron saint of the in-yer-face playwrights who surfaced in 1990s Britain, with acclaimed
writers like Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill all but anointing him the patriarch of the movement.

Rude Guerrilla has long championed those writers, which makes it all the more interesting that more than a decade after forming the
company is tackling these two contemporary Bond one-acts.

Based on this production, advancing age hasn't tempered Bond's bite. Even if it doesn't seem like Bond is saying anything particularly
new (the world is still going to shit, if you haven't noticed) both plays show that he can still say that very, very well.

The first one-act is The Balancing Act, a 2003 pitch-black dark comedy that follows a Typhoid Mary-like homeless man, Nelson, who
seems to trigger violence and death everywhere he turns. But even amid stabbings, starvation and gruesome auto accidents, there is
raucous humor and trenchant insight—which, coupled with Bond's always-engaging ear for dialogue and resistance to typical
theatrical formality (characters snap fingers to cue lights; dead characters dance flamenco) make for a breathtaking ride. Granted,
the point is a downer: When you ain't got nothing, you've still got plenty to lose, whether it's your dignity, your freedom or your life.

Director Scott Barber's cast is uniformly strong, but anyone who thinks David Beatty's larceny-minded one-legged dancer doesn't steal
the show didn't see the same show I did.

[Chair], first produced in France last year, echoes The Balancing Act's theme of the economically oppressed continually savaged by
whatever powers might be. But it's less funny. It is more of an insular, self-contained piece, however, with a woman living in
desperate fear of an authoritarian government as she scrambles to keep secret the existence of the man she's raised: a hapless 27-year-
old stuck in a childlike state.

Where others of his generation have been bludgeoned by their gay lovers (Joe Orton), gravitated toward film or quasi-retirement
(Harold Pinter, Arnold Wesker) or simply disappeared (John Arden), Bond remains prolific and committed to the theater. He's still doing the work, even as the world grows shittier and shittier.

It's the End of the World As We Know It at Rude Guerrilla, 202 N.
Broadway, Santa Ana, (714) 547-4688. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30
p.m.; Also Thurs., Aug. 9, 8 p.m. Through Aug. 11. $10-$20.

August 3, 2007 THEATER REVIEW
Nightmarish 'End of the World as We Know It'
Goodness falls victim in two one-acts by Britain's Edward Bond that
show a society in chaos.

By Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

A derelict room is all that separates the characters from apocalyptic chaos in "It's the End of the World as We Know It," a
double bill of one-acts by British playwright Edward Bond, now receiving its American premiere at the Empire Theater in Santa Ana.

The plays, produced by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, examine the possibility of selfless goodness in a world teetering on the brink of disaster. And as you might expect from the author of "Saved," the brutal drama about demoralized working-class Londoners that infamously depicts the stoning of a baby, love doesn't exactly save the day.

In "The Balancing Act," an absurdist comedy that tunnels into a moral abyss, Viv (Jennifer Bridge) is found squatting in a house
that's about to be knocked down. She's convinced that if she steps foot on a certain spot on the floor, the planet will become
completely unhinged. With humanity's destiny hanging in the balance, she's determined to do what she can to thwart a global holocaust.

Nelson (Julian Draven), a blandish bloke with a soft heart who brings her meals, wants her to snap out of this delusion. But after
she's apparently killed in the demolition of the building, he learns through a parade of wackos that she may in fact have been the sanest of them all.

The production, which rapidly transforms into a violent vaudeville, never establishes a guiding tone under Scott Barber's direction. The company, operating with more gusto than discipline, reduces the anarchy of Bond's galloping dystopia to mere theatrical confusion. Still, it's a brave attempt at figuring out a rather tricky parable.

In "Chair," a more somber and stylistically simple meditation, Alice (Brenda Kenworthy), a woman whose eyes brim with long-endured Orwellian horror, tries to keep Billy (Alexander Price), her grown yet mentally stunted ward, occupied with his childlike drawings. From her window, she keeps tabs on a soldier (Paul Knox), who has been waiting for hours at a bus stop with a prisoner (Sally Norton). Plucking up her courage, Alice leaves her home to offer him a chair - - an act of uncalculated kindness that's treated like a brazen affront to the conventional order of things.

This simple deed ripples with nightmarish consequences not just for Alice but also for Billy, whom she has looked after at great risk to
her own safety. Of course, in a fascistic society, safety is a fantasy that's as easily destroyed as an abandoned puppy on a
freeway.

Barber's staging, though sloppy in its blocking and diction, features three gritty performances by Kenworthy, Price and Knox.
Together they communicate a palpable -- and quite terrifying -- sense of society hellbent on its own annihilation.

The question Bond seems to be posing here and in "The Balancing Act" isn't how can we stop the deadly madness but how might we retain a scrap of moral decency while the ground opens up beneath us.