The Quiet Routines of Urban Loneliness

Ms. Rasch (Edith Fields) returns home for a quiet candle-lit dinner and a long-stemmed red rose. She has a tidy home. She has plenty of time to watch television, read bodice-ripping novels, clip coupons, tear photos from her new Cosmo magazine, lay out tomorrow’s clothes and set the table for tomorrow’s breakfast. All can be done with minimal disturbance, with no human contact, because Ms. Rasch is utterly alone.

After 12 years, director Michael Arabian and Edith Fields reunite for “Request Concert,” a devastating portrait of modern urban loneliness at the Whitefire Theatre. In Franz Xaver Kroetz’s one-woman play without words, Fields is controlled and complacent as a woman who uses daily routines and rituals to mask her solitude, yet searches for hope.

For 90 minutes, the audience aches for more sound, fidgeting uncomfortably, just as Ms. Rasch attempts to quell the restless loneliness that exists within her bleakly drawn rut.

She tentatively looks outside, welcoming instead of cursing the neighbor’s barking dog. She gazes with greater interest at the cover of her romance novel than at the words on the page. At the end, her face fairly beams with joy when she makes her final decision.

This isn’t a happy story, but it’s one well-constructed and restructured under the sensitive direction of Arabian and played with simple humility by Fields.

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* “Request Concert,” Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends May 17. $18. (213) 960-7754. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.