THEATER/SNEAK PEEK : U.S. POLITICS MEETS THEATER OF THE ABSURD.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Honest Abe Lincoln is lying through his teeth. Or is he?

A few minutes ago, the Great Emancipator was smirking cynically while swearing to Illinois voters that he'd never, ever support interracial interbreeding. Read his lips!

Now, here he is declaring in highfalutin rhetoric that he's freeing the Southern slaves! Where's Sam Donaldson when you need him?

Speaking, incidentally, of the national media police, don't be distracted by that camera-toting paparazzo, stalking the stage of the Mark Taper Forum like a deranged hit man, or by those twin video loops of the Zapruder film, endlessly recycling American history both as tragedy and farce.

If at this point you're not beginning to suffer from metaphorical overload, certain questions may begin to pop out at you during ``House Arrest: An Introgression,'' Anna Deavere Smith's frenetic and thematically top-heavy yet thrillingly insightful new work in progress, which recently wrapped up a regrettably brief 11-performance run here.

Namely, was that earlier Lincoln a redneck impostor, the evil twin of America's martyred 16th president? Or is Smith simply showing us two sides of a complex, even conflicted human being, whose occasional willingness to put politics above principal says as much about the people who elected him as it does about the man himself? Was there a shadow side to Lincoln, Jefferson and JFK, not unlike that of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?

Mind you, ``House Arrest'' isn't wholly equating William Jefferson Clinton with his Jeffersonian namesake. But it can't resist lumping Bill and Hillary, Clarence and Anita, O.J. and Nicole, and the author of the Declaration of Independence and his slave-mistress, Sally Hemmings, in a funny if belabored s&m vignette titled ``Monticello Fashion Week.''

What's the point of this salacious three-ring circus? When it comes to '90s politics, Smith believes, all of us - voters, politicians, the dreaded mass media - have become celebrity-stooges in a mediocre melodrama-cum-minstrel show. Everyone is under ``house arrest,'' imprisoned in a kind of ideological blackface that obscures our purpose and betrays our complex and diverse national character.

A writer, performer and academic sleuth of Holmes-ian intellectual dexterity, Smith is best-known for her two ultra-topical solo shows, ``Fires in the Mirror,'' about a fatal ethnic clash between Jews and African-Americans in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, and ``Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,'' about the civil disturbance following the acquittal of four police officers in the Rodney King beating trial.

Basing her characters on real-life interviews, which she conducts herself, Smith has developed a unique brand of theater that's equal parts journalism, performance art, dramatic monologue and impersonation.

Mixing history with burlesque, tart editorial commentary with Barnum & Bailey theatrics, ``House Arrest'' arrives in Los Angeles more than a year behind schedule. Originally commissioned by the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C, it was performed in the nation's capital before l'affaire Lewinsky broke, forcing Smith to go back and incorporate new material into her work.

In ``House Arrest'' the ``characters'' form a rainbow coalition of famous and not-so-famous Americans, stretching from George Bush, Arianna Huffington and anti-abortion crusader Flip Benton to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, Tom Hayden, Huck Finn, Walt Whitman, journalist Christopher Hitchens, a Maryland prison guard, the French philosopher/social critic Michel Foucault, and the writer Studs Terkel, portrayed by Smith as a kind of cranky-wise vaudevillian prophet.

What's notably different is that until now Smith has been a miniaturist, letting her individual portraits coalesce into broader statements about American society and culture. In ``House Arrest'' she's working with her biggest, most experimental canvas, which she fills with a fine, multi-ethnic cast of 11, film and video clips, a strolling violinist, metal scaffolding used to represent everything from prison cells to presidential grandstands, and interpretive dance sequences choreographed by Donald Byrd.

That makes for an awfully busy stage, and at times the incessant tumble of historical cross-references and docu-surrealist digressions make ``House Arrest'' seem like a play divided against itself. Nor did the 45-minute community forum following the show add much to an already packed evening.

But even if Smith has bitten off more than she can digest in 120 minutes of sophisticated street theater, ``House Arrest'' offers more provocative grist to munch on than 120 hours of Sunday morning TV punditry. The phrase ``work in progress'' simply can't do justice to this prodigious display of historical pyrotechnics and bipartisan wit, which scorches the mind like Fourth of July fireworks. I'd suggest ``masterpiece in training.''