`CONTINUUM' A JOURNEY OF ACHIEVEMENT.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

Connection, shared vision, simpatico. However you choose to classify it, Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter have it: on the page and certainly on the stage.

That the two former New York University classmates have written the frank and mesmerizing play ``In the Continuum'' is achievement enough. But watching Gurira and Salter also share the same stage, tracking ``Continuum's'' parallel cross-continental journeys while never interacting with each other, beyond the play's first scene, is a feat of dramatic beauty.

A career woman in Zimbabwe and a hard-luck 20-something from South Central L.A. -- both of them pregnant -- learn they have contracted HIV. And the journeys begin: in search of answers, comfort and a future that includes something other than death. TV newswoman Abigail (played by Gurira) assumes her husband will leave her. Nia (Salter) was banking that her prep basketball star boyfriend, Darnel -- who is fast-tracked to the NBA -- will marry her. Before the virus came along, that is.

The time we spend with Abigail and Nia is balanced against the friends, relatives, domestics, even a witch doctor they meet. The counsel the two women receive is hugely unhelpful, and though ``In the Continuum'' is set in the present, where people with HIV are not the walking dead, the sense here is that Abigail and Nia are in desperate straits, indeed.

Does this sound like tough, stomach-churning material? Unquestionably it is, and Robert O'Hara's uncompromising production at the Kirk Douglas Theatre gives an audience no escape.

Nor should we seek any. Regardless of whether these characters' situations in any way mirror our own, sharing the room with them feels like a cathartic act of empathy. The irony, of course, is that as utterly isolated as Abigail and Nia may be, they are not actually alone. These two women with nothing else in common might be each other's source of compassion and fortitude were they not separated by thousands of miles.

Instead, they turn to people like former high-school friends, estranged relatives, Darnel's mother, even a sex worker. Keeping the symmetry, Salter plays all the men and women in Nia's life, and Gurira undertakes the people Abigail encounters. Even with the two central characters dropping out of sight for several scenes, the two actresses are so versatile and shade the secondary characters so vividly that our interest never flags.

Salter's portrayals include Nia's mother -- a woman who redefines the concept of tough love -- and Darnel's mom, who offers to buy Nia off. When Nia herself finally resurfaces, her earlier braggadocio is all but dissipated, and the girl is shredding her last $5 bill on a park bench, talking to her unborn child about mansions in Malibu and making up verses. Salter's handling of this scene will stay with this critic for weeks.

Gurira, whose eyes could burn holes through metal, is just as riveting. Abigail's fury and intense desperation are counterbalanced by the diffidence of nearly everybody else she meets. Of AIDS, the witch doctor, says flatly, ``We don't cure that, and nobody can cure that,'' but he offers advice on how to make her husband stay put.

That portrayal is in sharp contrast to Abigail's young servant, who is happily solo and therefore exploitable by no man.

The two characters almost ``meet up'' in the play's culmination, a kind of parallel day of reckoning which will either leave you with a slight ray of hope or else seriously dispirited. It's uncertain in which direction the authors/performers are leaning, but the beauty of ``In the Continuum'' is as much in the journey as in the outcome.

A final note: It was gratifying, as always, to see Kirk Douglas himself in the front row at ``In the Continuum's'' opening performance. May he long continue to witness the first-class fare that the theater bearing his name can bring to L.A. audiences.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

[e-mail]

IN THE CONTINUUM - Three and one half stars

Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Dec. 10.

Tickets: $20 to $40. [phone].

In a nutshell: Two unconnected women -- one in Zimbabwe, the other in South Central L.A. -- are diagnosed with HIV. Their journeys toward hope, understanding and life are gut-wrenching yet not to be missed.

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When Abigail (Danai Gurira) learns she has contracted HIV, her world is turned upside down in ``In the Continuum,'' at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through Dec. 10.