STAGE REVIEWS : Rapid Movements Through Sequences in Fantasy World : Lawrence Beiderman’s production at UCI is interesting but fails to acquaint viewers with the people whose minds they are about to enter.

IRVINE —  Like the dream world it seeks to investigate, Lawrence Beiderman’s “1/3: a series of rapid ‘I’ movements,” playing in the Fine Arts Studio Theatre at UC Irvine, travels a wide variety of imaginative turf. Seductive, talking whales, Play-Doh genitals and cartoon characters who escape the television set are just a few of the images that appear in a series of surrealistic vignettes that ostensibly illuminate the deeper psyches of the six protagonists.

Ultimately, though, Beiderman’s extended fantasy, while interesting, evaporates like a mirage. The performance is a full three hours long, yet very little time is spent acquainting us with the people whose minds we are about to enter. We simply do not know enough about their conscious identities to be moved by their secret selves.

Their dreams traverse some familiar territory of the subconscious: A businesswoman sheds her suit for a white, diaphanous gown and flies aloft with a would-be lover. An autistic woman, singing an aria in Italian, transforms into an expressive ballerina. A man experiences his 9-to-5 life as a Sisyphean exercise in which he rolls a giant aspirin back and forth over a hill, punctuating each journey with a fortune-cookie reading.

The characters wander through heavens and hells of their own making, mysterious territories that have been very inventively created by Beiderman and his designers. The set by Teri L. Zebic--a white bridge on towers--lights up with its own twinkling gray matter and, like the unloosed imagination during sleep, provides a constantly surprising array of props and locales. Kimberley M. Barnhardt’s clever, character-revealing costumes range from floating fantasies in tulle to a sadly comic rig that transforms a frat boy into a walking beer keg.

The lights by Eric Hanson are virtually a character in the play. They rage and dance and even nod off to sleep, animating the stage with an impressive display of color, pattern and personality.

The six actors, all very engaging, perform with precision and humor. But Deanne Lorette is transcendent as the autistic Mo, capturing both the whimsy and the pathos of a trapped intelligence in her unchanging yet somehow ever-fresh expression of forlorn confusion. This helps make Mo’s torments and triumphs of life easier to grasp than those of the other characters.

Of all the dream sequences, Mo’s is the closest to catharsis, contrasting as it does her fantasy of perception and beauty with her slack-jawed incomprehension of waking life.

‘1/3: a series of rapid ‘I’ movements’

A UC Irvine Stage 2 presentation of Lawrence Beiderman’s play. Written and directed by Beiderman. With Joel Forsythe, Colby French, Maura Vincent, Christina Tullock, Peter Massey and Deanne Lorette. Scenic designer: Teri L. Zebic. Costume designer: Kimberley M. Barnhardt. Lighting designer: Eric Hanson. Original music by Timothy G. Melbinger and Joel Forsythe. Performances today at 2 and 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Studio Theatre, UC Irvine. Tickets: $6 to $8. (714) 856-6617.