'The Blacks' by Jean Genet. (Art Watch).

In a small space behind the Auditorio Nacional, a race war is raging. The absurdist French playwright Jean Genet's inflammatory work on racial hatred has been adapted for the Mexican stage in a work that features a lot of screaming, finger-pointing, orgiastic dance sequences and questioning on both sides of the actor-audience divide.

Gyrating to a savage drum beat, scantily clad actors kick off the visceral show by entering the stage from the aisles and dancing around a white coffin that is to be the focus of the play, which meanders and swerves from the practically incoherent plot line.

That last point might sound like a criticism, but Genet's works--and the absurdist school in general--are characterized by such narrative chaos. The message comes in bursts, as the audience struggles to process the various incongruities on stage, which in this performance range from a mock jury composed of allegorical figures to toilets serving as thrones.

"You are white, and you are spectators. Tonight we act for you," said the ringleader of a group of blacks facing trial for the rape and murder of a white woman. These direct comments to the audience are sprinkled throughout the performance as the actor-audience dynamic is continually exploited by Genet, who throughout his personal and professional life lustily attacked the bourgeois mindset and never wanted his audience to get comfortable.

The orphaned Genet (1910-1986) spent most of his youth in prison for petty thievery before picking up the jailhouse pen and earning the support of such luminaries as French existentialist jean-Paul Sartre. He adopted the causes of the downtroden revolutionaries, backing the Black Panthers in the I 960s and Arab guerrillas in the '70s and '80s.

Written at a time (1958) when "separate but equal" conditions still plagued the U.S. South, "The Blacks"--which with its Spanish and French dialogue and voodoo segments seems more Caribbean than African-American in feel--has lost some of its urgency with 21st century audiences.

Its repeated calls of "Kill Whitey" seem a bit out of place, but the strength of this rendition of Genet's work lie in the moments of excellent dance and music that break up the wandering and hate-filled narrative.

In particular, the moves of Fabrina Melon, who electrified the Festival de Centro Historico 2002 with her performance in "La mirada del sordo' range from formally beautiful to hauntingly touching, as the Paris-educated dancer expresses more in her poses than the rest of the cast does with its screams. Melon plays a prostitute tortured by her attraction toward the mandingo-styled accused murderer, and her expressions, both facial and corporal, hint at the oceans of emotion rolling beneath the play's cardboard figures.

Also worth commending is the lovely Soprano voice and keyboard work of just-offstage musician Luz Angelica Uribe. The imaginative vision of accomplished set and costume designer Gilberto Aceves Navarro, who leapt to artistic prominence with his work on David Alfaro Siqueiros' UNAM murals in 1952 and has become a fixture of the Mexican fine arts scene, stirs the pot. Chiapas native Jose Luis Cruz directs the performance that runs under the translated title, "Los Negros."

This Latin American perspective on Genet's divisive work at times struggles to speak believably for the oppressed "Blacks" (some of the actors perform in black face),and some nude scenes could be interpreted as gratuitous rather than morally challenging. However," The Blacks" never fails to find solid artistic footing in its dance numbers, and the elegant final sequence, in which the large cast moves cleanly and neatly in two militarily rigid lines, giving structure to a piece of art that at times seems to be all over the place.

Teatro Orientacion

Centro Cultural del Bosque

Reforma and Campo Marte

Col. Polanco, Mexico City

Performances Thurs.-Fri. 8:30 p.m., Sat. 7 p.m., Sun. 6 p.m. through June 29 Monday and Tuesday performances thereafter