When New York met Franz Xaver Kroetz’ unforgettable 65-minute slide into the hell of mundanity, the play was called “Request Concert.” That was its name too when Bonnie Dillingham performed its San Diego debut 20 or so years ago.

Now Ion Theatre has the piece under the name “Request Programme” – something to do with translation copyrights – but that which we call a rose, by any other name still can brand itself into the brain.

Kroetz, a postwar German author preoccupied in agonizing over the proletariat, doesn’t translate real well but that’s unimportant, since the only dialogue comes from the television or, more importantly, the radio.

The cast – Linda Libby, on this occasion – has nothing to say. As in no thing. No words. It’s what she DOES that delivers the play’s undeniable wallop.

It’s sort of an existential shaggy dog story: A set-up so long that it force-feeds tedium; a non sequitur pay-off so sudden and brutish that it seems to bounce and clatter down some shaft of dark eternity.

The action is an anthem to banality. The woman returns home in the evening, meticulously follows her domestic routine, concludes her stern toilette and prepares to retire just as chaos yawns.

There are, in retrospect, hints. She reacts in mild judgment to the dedications of classical music selections – Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Rodgers and Hart – and she picks distractedly at a ghastly piece of hooked tapestry she’s making.

But she also lays out the breakfast setting, selects a outfit for the next day and sets the alarm clock. How poignant this all becomes, along with the heart-shaped napkin holder, the casual private nudity, the novelty ceramic egg cup ...

Glenn Paris has staged the piece with precise, obsessive minimalism, exactly as appropriate. There is nearly nothing on the drab, utilitarian set that he doesn’t use at least one of. The lint roller and flatiron, the hatboxes. What else?

And Ms. Libby is nothing short of formidable, an Eleanor Rigby that even the Beatles would overlook, a flabby soul so bruised by impotence that she is defenseless before even mild insights. Her vivid eyes, widening into sudden infinities, are those of helpless despair drawn inexorably toward oblivion.

This play, in a production this polished, belongs in the memory cabinet of any serious student of the theatre.

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