A rusted-out wreck of a car on stage left, terrorists with balaclavas and modern guns, women in Muslim dress cowering in a corner: Is it modern-day Iraq?

No, it’s Douglas Lay’s setting of Euripides’ great, late tragedy The Phoenician Women, in which a struggle for power in ancient Thebes leads two brothers into a mano a mano fight to the death.

Modern costumes and weaponry underscore the parallels between ancient Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) and today’s Middle East, where the quest for power drives action.

Dr. Marianne McDonald’s lovely and accessible translation of the play provides both the backstory for Sophocles’ Antigone, and a sort of sequel to his Oedipus Rex.

The house of Thebes was disgraced when it became known that Oedipus (Fred Harlow) unknowingly killed his father and married his mother Jocasta (Bonnie J. Stone). Oedipus and Jocasta’s sons Eteocles (Javier Guerrero) and Polynices (Todd Dunlavey) had a time-share agreement on political power in Thebes – it would alternate each year – but Eteocles, finding tyranny agreeable, has refused to cede to his brother at the appointed time.

Now Polynices and his large army are outside Thebes, poised to attack, and Jocasta is desperate to reconcile her sons and avoid the bloodshed.

This meditation on war, power and the human condition is nicely staged and offers many effective hold-to-blackout stage pictures, though the technique is a bit overused.

Stone makes the foreboding palpable in Jocasta’s desperate but futile attempt to make her sons see that their hubris and power hunger will mean the fall of the house of Thebes.

Guerrero and Dunlavey are excellent as the feuding brothers, and Harlow shows versatility in four small roles. The opening-night diction left a bit to be desired, especially on the part of the chorus, but I am told this problem has been fixed.

Euripides, youngest of the famous Greek triumvirate of dramatists that included Sophocles and Aeschylus, was not as popular as either of the others in his lifetime, probably because he was a stinging social critic who questioned anthropomorphic divinity and fallible human institutions.

The Greeks knew the price of hubris. Pity that the modern world has not learned that lesson.

The Phoenician Women, directed by Douglas Lay, plays through Sunday, May 31, at The Theatre, Inc. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call 619-216-3016 or visit www.thetheatreinc.com.

Andrew Hull’s stunning black-and-white set ushers us into Cygnet Old Town Theatre’s Bed and Sofa, a comic opera based on Abram Room’s controversial 1926 Russian silent film of the same name.

Filmed during that small window of time when Sergei Eisenstein and other giants of the new Soviet cinema were relatively free of political censorship, Bed and Sofa presented life not as it should be (which would soon become de rigueur) but as it was – bleak and small of scale, but sometimes also funny.

Composer Polly Pen set Laurence Klavan’s plain lyrics (taken from the screenplay) to fittingly angular music for this charming pint-sized opera. First presented locally at the theater’s Rolando space in 2004, Bed and Sofa became one of Cygnet’s most-requested shows for a return engagement.

Stone mason Kolya (Lance Arthur Smith) and his wife Ludmilla (Colleen Kollar Smith) share a chilly existence in their cramped one-room Moscow apartment with a bed and a sofa. Kolya keeps his wife chained to household drudgery, admonishing her every time he leaves to clean the floor or do some other chore.

One day Kolya brings home old army buddy Volodya (Jordan Miller), newly arrived in the capital. He’s a printer with a problem: Moscow’s housing crisis is so severe that he can’t find a place to live. Kolya has offered him the sofa.

When Kolya is called out of town for three weeks, Volodya offers to move to avoid wagging tongues, but Kolya won’t hear of it: “Ludmilla is crazy about me,” he sings.

That’s a mistake in any country; Ludmilla (who has been feeling ignored) quickly rediscovers romance with Volodya, and Kolya returns to find he has been consigned to the sofa.

It doesn’t end there: Other plot twists are in store before this delightful 90-minute opera comes to its surprising but just-right end.

Blond good looks and a solid tenor voice make relative newcomer Miller a welcome addition to the San Diego music scene. The Smiths, well known to patrons of Lamb’s Players Theatre, are also fine singing actors and acquit themselves very well here. Kudos to pre-recorded musicians Diana Elledge, Don Lemaster and Wendy Hoover as well.

Bed and Sofa is a small gem. Don’t miss it.

Directed by Sean Murray, Bed and Sofa runs through Sunday, May 31, at Cygnet Theatre Old Town. Shows Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets call 619-337-1525 or visit www.cygnettheatre.com.