"Marisol," University Players, CSULB, Long Beach, CA

Marisol, Jose Rivera’s surreal drama directed by Edgar Landa for the University Players at the Players Theatre, offers a fascinating and jarring examination of the relativity of hubris.

The story details the travails that befall Marisol (Angela Lopez) when she rebukes her Guardian Angel’s (Shela Duperval) attempt to enlist her aid in an angelic rebellion against God.

The repercussions of the ensuing celestial melee are felt on earth: June (Arin Gullen), Marisol’s best friend who moonlights as a Skinhead driven to derangement by paranoia and repeated golf club whacks upon her skull by her brother Lenny (Jason Justin), sets Scar Tissue Man (Steve Meeks), on fire; the sun refuses to rise; the moon won’t appear; and Lenny gives birth to a stillborn infant, having become impregnated by dint of intense sexual fantasies directed toward Marisol.

Even the earth of the pre-angelic rebellion was unstable and erratic: Ice Cream Man (Yuki Beppu) storms into Marisol’s office and threatens mayhem if not murder; Golf Club Woman (Natalia Chicherina) accosts Marisol on the subway; and a psychotic woman mistakenly thinks her boyfriend’s in bed with Marisol.

Landa treats Rivera’s powerful and provocative script with the reverence of a matador. The performances are spirited; each new atrocity further unravels the shredded social fabric.

And Maureen Weiss’s clever set establishes a series of tomb-like metaphors that herald a final end to the species: a sepulchral subway, a grave site bed, a buried alive office and, most touching, a sidewalk series of shoebox coffins for children who barely took a breath before they died.

The story makes us chose sides in order to survive when one order of celestial bodies pits itself against another. Landa makes the choices more and more stark: remain a passive individual and consume or be consumed; or else act collectively and pledge allegiance to the old order which, upon reflection, wasn’t that bad in the first place.

Rivera’s message, refracted through the minimalist aesthetic of Landa, reminds us what’s at stake with the for us/against us premise that informs a current war on terror.

Lopez’s Marisol surged with the fury of a capped volcano. Her performance ran the ambit from frazzled twenty-something textbook editor to existential at-ends woman on the brink of extinction.

She could be very, very funny, as in the opening sequence when she wonders if the Angel who came to broker a deal was there to annunciate that she would carry God’s child. She could be annoyed, as when she shrugs off various sexual advances. And she could explode with the power of Post-Apocalyptic Millennial Woman when she alone of those who hadn’t lost their minds, their instincts, and their dignity, decides to leapfrog the angels on the heavenly organizational chart to the chief celestial officer.

Performances are Tue - Thu, 7 PM, Fri & Sat, 8 PM, Sat, 2 PM. The play runs until May 19. Tickets are $12-15. The Theatre is located in the Theatre Arts Building on the south end of the CSULB campus. For more information call 985-5526 or visit www.csulb.edu/depts/theatre/.