Savage Drama From Furious Theatre

“Saturday Night at the Palace,” the inaugural production of the Furious Theatre Company, may not be a perfect debut. However, it is an ambitious and richly rendered effort by an impressive new group that bears watching.

The group’s new performance space, part of a former plastic-container factory in Pasadena, has been handsomely reconfigured into a 99-seat black-box theater, the backdrop for set designer Melissa Teoh’s minutely rendered re-creation of a flyspecked roadhouse.

The technical production, including Christie Wright’s unobtrusive lighting, is first-rate, although the acoustics of the space, which has been masked off by black draperies within a cavernous shipping and receiving area, are difficult. But the success of this production hinges on the material itself, South African playwright Paul Slabolepszy’s savage apartheid-era drama, seen here in its U.S. premiere.

In the play, September (Sean Blakemore), the Zulu manager of a small burger joint on the outskirts of Johannesburg, is just closing up for the night when his regular routine is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Vince (Shawn Lee) and Forsie (Eric Pargac), twentysomething white youths who have apparently broken down on the road. The bitterly racist Vince, an emotionally disturbed delinquent with dreams of becoming a soccer star, is the flashpoint for the explosion to follow. But it is Forsie, a childlike “nice guy” whose egalitarian principles ultimately extend only as far as his own self-interest, who most shocks and dismays us.

At first, director Damaso Rodriguez’s staging is inappropriately broad, as are the performances, with the exception of the pitch-perfect Blakemore. Vince initially comes across as a swaggering stereotype, while Pargac is so comically obtuse that he smacks of Graham Chapman in his Monty Python “Village Idiot” routine. Fortunately, both Lee and Pargac gradually assume the authority and momentum necessary for the agonizing denouement.

Why it took so long for Slabolepszy’s harrowing parable of powerlessness and privilege to reach this country is a mystery, but the Young Turks at Furious are to be commended for their choice, as well as this difficult but rewarding first production.

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“Saturday Night at the Palace,” Furious Theatre, Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. Fridays-Sundays, 8:30 p.m. $15. Ends May 19. (818) 679-8854. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.