Tony Kushner blasted onto the world stage in the early 1990s with his epic two-part drama Angels in America, exploring what it was like to be gay in the 1980s. Now Diversionary Theatre presents Kushner’s 1985 play, A Bright Room Called Day, through Dec. 4, directed by Brendon Fox.

Politics always seems to have a prominent role in Kushner’s work; here it is the focus. Set in Berlin in 1932, A Bright Room Called Day explores the response of a group of five artists to the growing political menace that will split the group and lead to World War II and the Holocaust.

As the march to Nazi power flashes on a video screen, the five friends try to hold onto their lives, until it becomes clear that their world is about to come to an abrupt end.

The characters are Agnes Eggling (Lauren Zimmerman), a moderately successful character actress in German film; Baz (Daren Scott), a gay man who works for the Berlin Institute for Human Sexuality; actress Paulinka (Jessica John); Annabella (Robin Christ), a communist and working graphic designer; and Hungarian exile and cinematographer Husz (Ron Choularton).

Kushner likes to deal with ghosts, angels and other phantoms. Here he uses Die Alte (Priscilla Allen), an old woman presumably dead some years, who haunts Agnes; and the devil, here named Gottfried Swetts (Richard Baird). In a wonderfully amusing short scene, the devil traces his own role throughout history: “I am not an is so much as an isn’t. This century, my new form is no form at all. I have attained invisibility.”

Kushner has a good ear for dialogue (some of it truly poetic), and gets points for taking on serious issues: the relationship between art and politics, the place of art in politics, political repression and the problems of minorities.

But he also has the annoying habit of assuming his audience is unable to make the connections he is suggesting. Here, in case we miss the parallels he draws between Hitler and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, he inserts Zillah (Amanda Sitton), a contemporary graduate student doing research on the period, as a sort of Greek chorus restating the points for us.

Kushner updated Zillah’s lines in 1991; Diversionary has updated it even more. Topical it may be; subtle it is not.

The powerhouse cast could hardly be better. My personal favorite is Baird, who, as usual, commands the stage whenever he’son it. But every one of these actors gives a fine performance, and despite the limitations of the script (Frank Rich described the New York production as “an early contender for the most infuriating play of 1991”), this production is certainly a contender for best ensemble cast.

A Bright Room Called Day plays through Dec. 4 at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 7:00 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.org.

Politics also take center stage in Peter Weiss’ The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, presented by Ion Theatre through Dec. 4 and directed by Claudio Raygoza.

Libertine writer Marquis de Sade and French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat never met (though Sade did deliver Marat’s funeral eulogy), but Weiss posits an imaginary political argument between the two in the madhouse of Charenton in 1808 (where Sade was confined from 1803 until his death in 1814).

It’s a play within a play on two levels: the political discussion between Sade and Marat, and the play itself about Marat’s murder in 1793, directed by Sade and enacted by the inmates of the asylum. Reality and illusion, sanity and madness, libertine individualism and socialist thought mix and mingle in the play, which contains elements of theater of the absurd, theater of cruelty, Brecht and Artaud, all delivered in an atmosphere that makes the viewer wonder who is crazy, who sane and whether Sade and Marat are speaking for themselves or for Weiss.

It’s a theatrical circus, and Raygoza – using two rooms of the Academy of Performing Arts space – heightens that fact by beginning the play outside, where a character washes clothes, with eerie music emanating from inside. Then the audience is led through the rehearsal hall (where the inmate actors are warming up) and finally into the play space itself. It gives the impression of touring the asylum before the performance starts, and invites a level of involvement unusual but fitting for this play.

The stage is a jumble, perhaps reflecting the proceedings to follow: a long platform, a huge institutional-like jungle gym contraption which inmates hang on or climb; a bathtub to one side; and two seats high up for asylum director Coulmier (Walter Ritter) and his wife (Sylvia Enrique).

Raygoza plays Sade with a kind of weary bemusement, much more interested in the discussion than his play. Matt Scott’s Marat, the socialist revolutionary who, it is thought, speaks for Weiss as well as himself, is very good in his soggy role (he sits in a bathtub throughout, where he seeks relief from an itchy skin condition), as is Anahid Shahrik as Marat’s mistress Simonne, tenderly caring for Marat.

The character who makes this show work is Herald, the narrator, played wonderfully here by Jennifer Jonassen. It’s her responsibility to illuminate the historical and political situation and to explain to the audience (in rhyme) what’s happening in the play.

It’s easy to complain about the chaotic structure of the play, and perhaps of certain aspects of this production as well. Sade and Marat pontificate, but don’t really engage each other. Likewise, each inmate is off in his own world, though some (like Brandon Walker’s erotomaniac Duperret) choose to interact in inappropriate ways.

The claustrophobic feel of the small space also works to Raygoza’s advantage here, forcing the audience’s attention, if not its engagement. Sitting close enough to clearly see the faces of the actors definitely provides a different (and better) experience from other performances of this show I have seen.

What is Weiss’ point? Is the world a nuthouse? Are we all inmates, clawing to stay alive and for a shred of dignity? You decide.

Marat/Sade, like A Bright Room Called Day, suffers from excess – there’s too much going on, too much noise, too many reiterations of the political points. Subtlety is not Weiss’ style.

Politics, lunacy, love and disease; rhyme, prose and wild costumes: There’s something for everyone. And for sheer spectacle, this play is hard to beat.

Marat/Sade plays through Dec. 4 at the Academy of Performing Arts, located at 4580-B Alvarado Canyon Rd. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m. No show on Friday, Nov. 25. For tickets, call (619) 245-4958 or visit www.iontheatre.com.