If you’ve ever contemplated killing the boss, you’ll understand the fix Mr. Zero (Richard Crawford) is in. After 25 years as a low-level wage slave, the aptly named Zero is called to the boss’ office. Expecting a raise and perhaps a move up to the main office, Zero is shocked to hear he’s being sacked, replaced by an adding machine.

At home he is nagged by Mrs. Zero (Jan Leslie Harding), who takes his silent unresponsiveness as an insult, not knowing the secret he harbors: he’s just murdered the boss.

Playwright Elmer Rice’s Marxist-tinged The Adding Machine plays through Oct. 7 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, directed by Daniel Aukin.

Rice’s 1923 play predates the dystopia of the 1927 Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), but the topic – the tyranny of technology and the precarious situation of worker cogs in the machinery of capitalism – is at least as relevant today as it was then.

Zero is arrested, summarily tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. But the play doesn’t end there; instead, Zero ends up jockeying for position with the other stiffs in the cemetery, later to be mysteriously transported to the Elysian fields, Rice’s version of heaven.

Life was a cruel cosmic joke for Zero, but death is even more confusing: what is a murderer like him doing in heaven? That Zero flees the Elysian fields, leaving his unacknowledged love Daisy (Diana Ruppe) – who has killed herself in order to join him – dismally suggests that man cannot accept happiness even when it’s thrust upon him.

Said to be the first American expressionist play, The Adding Machine uses a style that makes it difficult for the audience to connect with these alienated and often alienating characters, as interior monologues alternate with and sometimes become exterior actions.

Aukin has tried to delineate one from the other by the physical placement of characters on the Potiker set, configured in the round for the first time. Andrew Lieberman’s square set sports a frame that can be raised and a rotating circle in the middle whose significance escapes me. The script calls for strange and unexpected noises to be heard from time to time, such as the metallic whistle that grows louder as Zero’s boss verbally and physically (he’s dressed as a boxer) dances around and finally delivers his oral pink slip.

Aukin has some fine actors to work with – Crawford and Harding are excellent, and I am particularly happy to report that Joshua Everett Johnson, one of our finest local actors, plays Shrdlu, whom Zero meets in the cemetery.

This expressionist play is confusing enough without the production problems presented here. The court scene is unclear (to me, at least); I was aware of Zero’s extraordinary monologue but unclear about where the scene was set.

Aukin and his team have also missed the opportunities for humor in this dark comedy. There is a party scene in which the stage directions indicate the women look like Stepford wives and the men dress identically except for different colored wigs. Aukin decided to forgo this. He also chose to delete the prison scene – often left out, in truth, but it presents interesting possibilities for dark humor.

This leaves only Rice’s bleak view of life and what passes for humankind, a difficult slog for an audience looking to be entertained.

More an excursion into the history of theater than a compelling dramatic event, The Adding Machine will be most appreciated by those interested in American theater history.

The Adding Machine plays through Oct. 7, at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre at La Jolla Playhouse. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (858) 550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.org.

The truly horrendous thing about sexual abuse of children is that usually the perpetrator is someone the victim has come to trust, a family member or perhaps a member of the clergy.

Li’l Bit (Kym Pappas) got more than driving lessons from her Uncle Peck (Tony Pérez). She tells her story in Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, playing through Oct. 6 at OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista. Carla Nell directs.

The script is not chronological; it begins when Li’l Bit is about 40, but concentrates on ages 11 to 18, when she overcomes the past by geographical escape, even managing to forgive. Scene changes are delineated by spoken driving instructions. Aside from Li’l Bit and Peck, Vogel has three characters she calls Greek Chorus (Teri Brown, Bobby Schiefer and Bonnie Alexander), who play a variety of roles including Peck’s wife Aunt Mary, Li’l Bit’s mother, grandmother and grandfather, and various other characters.

Li’l Bit, whose father is out of the picture, is an easy mark for Peck, who first seduces her at the age of 11 by offering to let her steer his car while sitting in his lap. But he didn’t drive, and soon she felt his touch and heard him moan. “That was the last day I lived in my body,” she reports. “After that I retreated to my head, and I’ve been there ever since.”

How I Learned to Drive is about abuse and forgiveness, psychology and family dynamics, weakness and inner strength. Vogel’s nonlinear approach intersperses humor (as when the three women discuss men and sex) and ’60s songs with Li’l Bit’s story.

Sexual abuse is a heinous crime, but Vogel doesn’t take the easy road by portraying Uncle Peck as a monster. Rather, Peck’s quiet, even comforting demeanor makes the seduction seem almost natural – and magnitudes more horrible.

Pappas is heartbreaking, embuing Li’l Bit with all the curiosity, horror and hurt required. Pérez’s Uncle Peck is a little weak – fluffed lines, an impassive demeanor and an accent work against the portrayal of predatory caring. The Greek chorus trio is generally fine, although I found Grandma and Grandpa a bit too screechy to be believable.

How I Learned to Drive is difficult but important theater – hard to watch, impossible to forget. You can’t ask for much more.

How I Learned to Drive plays through Oct. 6, at OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (619) 422-7787 or visit www.onstageplayhouse.org.

Many a writer has joked that he’d kill for a good plot, and Sidney Bruhl (Jonathan Wexler) is no exception.

The noted playwright has suffered a string of flops and a bout of writer’s block. One day a play comes in practically over the proverbial transom from Clifford (Nick Louie), a student Bruhl had encountered in a workshop. Sidney recognizes its commercial potential and mentions the possibility of murder in jest (or is it?) to his fretful wife Myra (Cheryl Livingston).

When Sidney actually does the deed in full view of Myra, it looks like the play is over. But this is Ira Levin’s Deathtrap: With its fiendishly clever plot in which nothing is quite as it seems, twists are the name of the game. Deathtrap plays through Oct. 6 at the North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe, directed by Terrie Trenchard.

Deathtrap, which holds the record as the longest-running mystery on Broadway, owes an acknowledged debt to Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and was made into a successful 1982 film starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.

Though this production suffers from some amateurish acting (exceptions are Diane Malloy’s loony psychic neighbor Helga Ten Dorp and Louie’s Clifford, a cut above and fun to watch), Deathtrap is worth seeing for the cleverness of the plot.

Deathtrap plays through Oct. 6, at North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. For tickets call (619) 647-4958.

That well-known early 20th century American melting pot of peoples, backgrounds and cultures coexist in Ragtime: the Musical, which closes this weekend at Starlight Theatre in Balboa Park. Brian Wells directs.

Adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime: The Musical interweaves the stories of a wealthy white family, a poor widowed Jewish immigrant, his young daughter and a black Harlem musician and revolutionary to illustrate the economic disparity, prejudice, hope and despair that characterized the time. Added in are historical figures including Henry Ford (Paul Morgavo), Houdini (David Beaver), Booker T. Washington (Ricky Allen) and that famous anarchist, Emma Goldman (Sue Boland).

Father (Ted King), the rich and restless American adventurer, signs on with Admiral Peary’s expedition to the North Pole, leaving Mother (Deborah Gilmour Smyth) to deal with all family matters.

The immigrant Tateh (Luke Adams) makes a meager living as a silhouette artist, selling on the street while seeking ways to make a better life for his daughter. Pianist Coalhouse (Eugene Barry Hill) tries to figure out how to survive as a musician, learning late that his former girlfriend Sarah (Marja Harmon) has had his child.

Ragtime: The Musical won four Tonys in 1998, and Starlight does well by it, despite the fact that the outdoor theater demands the kind of overmilking that results in mushy sound. Smyth anchors the piece as Mother, who takes Sarah in, to the consternation of friends in the white community and even her husband, when he finally returns from his adventure.

Harmon’s Sarah is heartbreaking and lovely to listen to. Adams demonstrates a lovely voice as well, as does Hill.

Immigrant rights, social justice and racism: sometimes it seems not much has changed in the last century.

Ragtime: The Musical runs through Sept. 23, at Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park. Shows Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. For tickets call (619) 544-7827.