Director Loretta Greco brings the magic back into the Magic Theatre with a stunning production of Luis Alfaro's Oedipus el Rey, an incestuous love story that mirrors another play taking place on the American Conservatory stage where Phedre lusts after her stepson. Both stories come from ancient taboos, and both reveal that little has changed. While ACT keeps Racine's Phedre rooted in the 17th century, Alfari's Oedipus el Rey begins in a California prison. There a chorus of orange-shirted prisoners gives us the back story and bemoans the inevitable end. Hindsight reveals holes in the script, but Greco and her perfectly cast ensemble create visceral fear and dread in audiences who watch the attractive young hero move deeper and deeper into a tragic love affair.

Joshua Torrez brings a physical arrogance and attractiveness to the role that helps explain how Oedipus can be so blind. His impetuous anger causes him to kill his birth father, Laius, a role that Eric Aviles fiercely inhabits. Marc David Pinate, his adopted father, the blind Tiresias, creates a loving, wise counselor. Meanwhile, Carlos Aguirre and Armando Rodriguez re-enact the strong and identifiable characters from the Greek story while being constantly involved as the watching and commenting chorus.

Romi Dias makes Jocasta irresistibly seductive. Her bravado is a challenge to her son's masculine side while her widow's vulnerability appeals to the motherless boy. This makes their love affair, enacted with full nudity on the intimate Magic stage, sweet and hot.

The leads perform brilliantly but the vitality of this production is sustained from the Chorus as it moves in lockstep to tell in poetic phrases and show in choreographed movements how a thoroughly modern man can fall under an ancient curse.

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Playwright Rajiv Joseph also deals with an ancient art in the latest at SF Playhouse. In Animals Out of Paper, he uses origami to reveal the heart of characters who are in retreat from life. Andy is a shy high school calculus teacher; Suresh is his brilliant, but disturbed student. Ilana, a well known origami artist, is the wild card. As these three become reluctantly involved, they find their lives expanding and unfolding in unexpected ways. Director Amy Glazer directs the overlapping relationships with a smooth hand, keeping the emotional suspense high as the characters are forced to move forward.

Lorri Holt's Ilana is seriously depressed. She has retreated to her cluttered studio where she spends most of her time on a narrow couch staring at the huge origami hawk left behind by her departing husband and mourning the loss of her three-legged dog. When David Deblinger's Andy shows up, he doesn't get a warm welcome; but when he accidentally leaves his private notebook containing over 7,000 items about himself and his life, all written with a positive slant, Ilana is intrigued enough to accept his student Suresh (Aly Mawji) as an apprentice origamist. The subsequent relationship between the young student and his middle-aged teacher, even though it never leads to a nude encounter, has its uncomfortable moments.

Deblinger is likable as the schlubby Andy who has been able to turn every painful encounter into a positive one--until he encounters Ilana. Mawji ably embodies the role-playing teen who is trying on life and finding it a bad fit. Holt's Ilana is heartbreakingly sad and so committed to her own rage and self pity that even a bad relationship feels like a good start.

SF Playhouse is leading the way with new and exciting plays and producers Bill English and Susi Damilano have just opened a second stage (The Sandbox) for even newer works. First up is local playwright Geetha Reddy's story of paranoia and survival, The Safe House. Audiences won't be bored at either theater.

NOW PLAYING

Oedipus el Rey runs through Feb. 28 at Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, S.F.; 415/441-8822, www.magictheatre.org.

Animals Out of Paper runs through Feb. 27 at SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, S.F.; 415/677-9596, www.sfplayouse.org.

Draw the curtain on Lee at freshleebrady@gmail.com.

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