Sledgehammer Theatre has made its reputation on edgy, stick-it-in-your-face theater that pulls no punches (remember Berzerkergang and Frankenstein?).

After a tough 20th anniversary year which saw the departure of artistic director Kirsten Brandt and the destruction of its home base at St. Cecilia’s Playhouse, Sledgehammer has found a new home at the Tenth Avenue Theatre downtown, a space shared with Eveoke Dance Theatre.

Charles L. Mee’s Chiang Kai Chek, the first offering of their 21st season, is a multimedia meditation on power and its abuses. Unfolding at a deliberate, almost excruciating pace for westerners, the piece features mezzo soprano Markee Rambo-Hood singing, among other things, parts of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.”

Also onstage is Eveoke dance marvel Ericka Moore, interpreting the often-horrifying words of Chiang (John Polak), who sits cross-legged on the floor constructing a house of cards. Behind this is a screen inexplicably featuring home movies. Nick Carvajal serves as a one-man band, playing the abstract music of Tim Root. Scott Feldsher directs.

Mee and Chiang ask us to consider this possibility: “Suppose Socrates was wrong, that we have never seen the truth, and so if we ever do see it we won’t recognize it.”

Thus Chiang describes with equal lack of emotion a summer romance and the murder of a baby, the evisceration of his son’s pet tortoise and a dream in which he goes to heaven.

The program notes offer this comment: “This production is meant to function as a philosophical meditation. A Zen koan, it asks questions and does not provide answers. One must find that space between waking and sleeping, where intuition reigns and morality may, potentially, exist.”

The problem isn’t so much that questions aren’t answered, but that the disparate elements do not add up to a coherent whole – much like life, perhaps, but annoying as theater.

The best thing Chiang has going for it is Moore’s magnificently evocative and expressive dance, so opposite Polak’s emotionless delivery.

Chiang Kai Chek is theater for the adventurous – those willing to forgo the usual theatrical strictures of plot and character development. It’s a tall order for the average theatergoer, who may come away thinking the best thing about the evening is director Scott Feldsher’s funny before-the-play speech.

Chiang Kai Chek plays through July 20 at the Tenth Avenue Theatre, located at 930 10th Ave. downtown. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with a matinee July 2 at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1484.

Love and politics, passion and philosophy, Jew and Nazi: The story of 20th century intellectual giants Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger is stranger than anything any novelist could concoct.

Hannah Arendt (Christina Barsi), from a secular Jewish family, is 18 when she takes a class at Marburg University from Martin Heidegger (Stan Madruga).

Heidegger, one of the most influential thinkers of his time, is intoxicated by thought, by the idea of pushing oneself over the edge intellectually, beyond the comfort zone and into a “labyrinth” whose exit is unknown. He is 35 and married, but the instant intellectual connection he has with Hannah leads to a passionate five-year affair.

They lose frequent contact when he sends her to Heidelberg to pursue her doctoral degree with Karl Jaspers (Mark Petrich). They maintain occasional contact until 1933, when Arendt realizes that she, a Jew, will not be allowed to publish or teach. Writing about political propaganda lands her in prison; when she gets out, she flees to Paris, marries and moves to New York, where she writes and teaches at the New School for Social Research. But the emotional attachment to Heidegger never ends.

Meanwhile, Heidegger, seduced by Hitler’s rhetoric, throws in his lot with the Nazis. He is hired as full professor at Freiburg University, where he later becomes rector.

By war’s end, Arendt is famous in her own right, a political theorist, authority on totalitarianism and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. Heidegger has lost his job as rector and been blackballed as a professor. Arendt is in a position to help him. Should she?

Laterthanever Productions tells their story in first-time playwright Kate Fodor’s Hannah and Martin, playing through July 2 at San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Space. Francine Chemnick directs.

Hannah and Martin gives a good feel for the intellectual attraction. Dense with ideas and drunk on philosophy, you’ll get plenty of ammunition here for après-theater discussions.

Fodor is less successful (indeed, perfunctory) at portraying the passion, and doesn’t even try to explain how Arendt could not only forgive him, but argue for his reinstatement as a professor after the Nuremberg Trials. After all, as Jaspers puts it, “He showed me with his life that his thinking is flawed.” Even Arendt’s secretary, Alice (Krista Bell), refuses to type the letter for her. (Fortunately, Arendt expert and co-producer Kathy Jones explains it for you in the program notes.)

There is also some extraneous business about the testimony of Hitler Youth organizer Baldur von Schirach (Tony Malanga), which could be cut without doing harm to the drama.

Barsi and Madruga are fine as Arendt and Heidegger, though occasionally their thick German accents get in the way of intelligibility. And Madruga needs to know that whispering is not an effective communication style in this theater, especially not when an accent is involved.

Petrich and Tracey McNeil are warm and outgoing as Karl and Gertrude Jaspers, in sharp contrast to the Heidegger household run efficiently but coldly by the suspicious Elfride Heidegger, played splendidly by Connie Di Grazia.

Shulamit Nelson’s costumes are terrific, David Weiner’s set workable, and there’s only one little problem that can’t be fixed: a blinding projector light is aimed at the audience; it serves to bounce the light to a screen that projects photos of Germany. You can avoid it in the top couple of rows, but then you risk missing some of the dialogue.

If you’re looking for typical light summer fare, Hannah and Martin is not for you. But if you’re excited by ideas, don’t miss this one.

Hannah and Martin runs through July 2 at San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Space. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 544-1000.