I love it when a new theater space opens in town. San Diego has many small theater groups, but not enough spaces where they can showcase their talents.

Ion Theatre, which last season mounted an acclaimed production of Marat/Sade in a Mission Valley dance studio (where they had to strike the considerable set every night and cart it away), is in shakedown cruise mode at its new downtown space (christened New World Stage) at 917 Ninth Ave., across the street from the public library.

Ion’s initial offering is a trio of absurdist classics: Beckett’s one-acts Krapp’s Last Tape and Not I, and Ionesco’s The Chairs, to play in repertory through July 9. Executive artistic director Claudio Raygoza directs the Ionesco; producing artistic director Glenn Paris the Becketts.

Samuel Beckett, best known for leaving us all waiting for Godot, was an absurdist on the way to accomplishing what he called “lessness” when he wrote Krapp’s Last Tape in 1958, and was much further along that road in 1973 when he wrote Not I. Both of these pieces are short and involve only one actor. Both are about isolation and aloneness.

Not I is a serious challenge for an actor used to using his or her whole body to communicate with the audience. Beckett calls his lone character Mouth and directs that only that body part be visible, the point being that the speaker is isolated, alone, only a voice crying to – whom? Probably no one.

The part is usually played by a woman, though stage directions do not specify. But the many references to the feminine and the suggestion at the beginning that a “tiny little girl” is born through “that godforsaken hole” make it a natural for an actress.

Claudio Raygoza takes on the task and offers a fair reading, but director Glenn Paris needs to rethink the staging. Placing Raygoza in a stage-left alcove behind a black cloth that tends to move and allow his arm to show, the gender disparity and Raygoza’s tendency to speak too softly to be intelligible combine to make this a somewhat disconcerting experience.

Much better – and better known – is Krapp’s Last Tape. Here, a rumpled old man (Raygoza) of stooped gait muses about his past and the life he might have had. Unlike most of us, Krapp doesn’t have to depend on a faulty memory – his history is stashed in boxes by the desk, on reel-to-reel tapes recorded in earlier and presumably happier times. Krapp spends his time playing those tapes – here he’s concerned with his mother’s death and a past love affair – and in pursuing an inordinate, nearly erotic relationship with bananas, a highlight of Raygoza’s interpretation.

This is no comedy, but the comedic interval is welcome as Krapp marches toward death alienated and alone, not forgetful enough to be unaware of that fact.

“Perhaps my best years are gone,” he says. “When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.”

Krapp’s Last Tape runs through July 9 in repertory with Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs at the New World Stage, located at 917 Ninth Ave. For the schedule, visit www.iontheatre.com. For tickets, call (619) 374-6894 or visit www.iontheatre.com.

An Old Man (Glenn Paris) leans perilously far out a window “to see the boats.” His wife, the Old Woman (DeAnna Driscoll), drags him back, reminding him that it’s dark outside.

“But you can see shadows,” he says.

These two, fast approaching the end of their days, live in the shadows of their failing memories and in a fantasy world of their own devising.

Ion Theatre presents Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs in their new digs, the New World Stage downtown, through July 9, directed by Claudio Raygoza.

In a room with two tall, arched windows and seven doors, the Old Man, a “general factotum” who could have been much more in life “if only you’d had a little ambition,” sits on his wife’s lap while she asks him to tell her the “same old story.”

This night, the man announces he has invited everyone (“property owners, intellectuals, merchants, pen holders, chromosomes”) and will at last reveal the secret, the culmination of his life’s work, which will save humanity. He has even engaged a professional Orator (Jonathan Sachs) to deliver the address.

The guests begin to arrive by boat and the Old Woman is dispatched to fetch chairs. Each is greeted graciously and seated, and polite conversation ensues – but, of course, the guests are invisible. The Old Man and his wife are playing a game, or perhaps just passing time as they wait for the Grim Reaper.

Ionesco’s play opened in 1952 and was overshadowed by Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot, which opened the same year. It’s a pity because in my opinion The Chairs delivers the same message in a far more engaging manner.

But the main reason to see this is Driscoll, she of the wondrously expressive face and gestures who makes the Old Woman seem so real you want to make sense of both her actions and the pretend conversations with her “guests.”

That’s not to slight Paris’ Old Man, stooped and withered but still showing that inexplicable human spark and operating as if life made sense.

Life may be meaningless, the world hostile and communication illusory, as the absurdists maintained, but Raygoza’s production of The Chairs is anything but. Don’t miss it.

The Chairs runs through July 9 in repertory with an evening of two Beckett one-acts, at the New World Stage, located at 917 Ninth Ave. For the schedule, visit www.iontheatre.com. For tickets, call (619) 374-6894 or visit www.iontheatre.com.

Memo to Harold Uhry

Dear Mr. Uhry:

I recently saw your play Without Walls at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, mainly because years of admiration for Laurence Fishburne on film inspired me to want to see him onstage. And after seeing your wonderful Driving Miss Daisy, I had great hopes.

Fishburne plays Morocco, a gay drama teacher in a progressive Manhattan high school. Matt Lanter and Amanda MacDonald play his students Anton and Lexy. Anton is a slacker transfer who’s been kicked out of several other schools; Lexy is Morocco’s star actress.

A middle-aged chorus boy whose career never quite took off, Morocco seems to have quite a rep (“the best drama teacher in Manhattan”), so he’s apparently been around the teaching block a few times. He casts Anton and Lexy in the next school play (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). The students’ mutual attraction is obvious. So tell me, why does he go off to the ballet, leaving Anton and Lexy in his apartment to “rehearse?” You have been a teacher, Mr. Uhry. Surely you’re aware that even someone who teaches at the “open classroom” Dewey School would know that’s an invitation to disaster.

Who is Morocco, anyway? We know nothing about him except that he wears a purple dressing gown, likes ballet and makes a mean chili. This may be enough to establish his gay creds, but what drives him? What does he want? We’re left to admire Fishburne’s considerable talent for histrionics, but with no idea who his character is.

Anton and Lexy are somewhat better defined – Anton the troubled kid of rich but absent parents; Lexy the student star who really wants to skip the play and study for the SAT – until she finds out Anton will be in it.

Lanter and MacDonald do well enough at portraying the bad behavior expected of poor little rich kids but, frankly, that gets old pretty fast, and so do their long phone calls in which they try to manipulate each other.

And Anton’s big scene with Morocco? You’ve worked with kids, Mr. Uhry. You have to know how phony that rings.

Without Walls gives us surface characters in a play that gives us no reason to care. Even watching Fishburne play against type isn’t enough to inspire more than a shrug.

Put the play back in the oven, Mr. Uhry. It’s not done yet.

Without Walls plays through July 16 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Shows Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772 or visit www.centertheatregroup.org.