Quantum Theatre's latest, "The Task" by the German Heiner Muller (1929-95), is an epic, poetic, highly theatrical provocation in the fullest Quantum manner. That means it takes a text rich in cranky ideas and turns it into an intellectual circus on the run.

Almost literally. The audience moves (although it need not run) from scene to scene through the musty caverns of the Strip's Gage Building, often sitting, sometimes standing, always one step behind Muller's surprising, prickly brain. In the process Narelle Sissons' set design gives us many theatrical modes -- proscenium, in the round, thrust and traverse.

The journey mimics that of the play, a flashback within a historical framework, recounting stations in a journey in search of ideology and meaning. It's no accident that the stark title is a grim call to principled action, reminiscent (given Muller's own ironic socialism) of Lenin's famous manifesto, "What Is to Be Done?"

But however dripping with historical inevitability this task may be, its dramatization is full of theatrical high jinks and political humor. Director Jed Allen Harris and his artistic team realize it with a mix of tragedy, comedy, satire, parable, surrealism and debate. It all adds up to a search for belief amid the debris of history.

So what if the playwright knows the search is futile -- he makes us want to follow his lead. So does this staging, propelled by brainy showmanship and realized by a dedicated cadre of seven actors. Follow their lead we do, circling among the seemingly infinite Gage Building pillars until, near the end, we begin to see places we've been before -- not a bad parallel to the journey we've been taking.

The task is no less than to achieve a just society. More specifically, the aristocrat Debuisson, peasant Galloudec and escaped slave Sasportas set out to foment a slave uprising in British Jamaica.

But we never hear much of this plan. It's just the imperative hanging over their heads, subsuming all others. What the play shows, in a series of startling midway exhibits, is serious political burlesque conceived as street theater, shaped into some nine scenes (depending how you count them) in almost that many places.

It takes a bit to find your way, but while more dramatic poem than conventional play (Muller creates his own conventions), "The Task" proves less abstract than other Muller works. After an introduction by a sassy sailor (Joseph McGranaghan), we sit down in an antique shop of history, piled with dusty books fondled by a dusty revolutionary (Mark Conway Thompson), then flash back to days when hopes were high.

The piece turns truly galvanizing when Debuisson confronts an image of fatal female desire (Tami Dixon), beckoning from a sepulchral glass box behind a chain link fence, flanked by his parents, represented by found-object sculptures that speak in ghostly static. Wow!

Wow! is the best critical response to this tour-de-force scene, where sound designer Joe Pino plays a major role. (Elsewhere, he uses music from "The Internationale" to "Love Letters in the Sand.") So do Susan Tsu's costumes, cannily spanning the centuries, and C. Todd Brown's lights, shaping the cavernous dark. Their work is seamless with that of director Mr. Harris and dramaturg J.A. Ball. Muller's texts leave lots of room for creative realization, and this team takes to it with such zest you can't say where text ends and interpretation begins -- an artistic appropriation that Muller famously encouraged.

The next scene is a boxing ring of slapstick confrontation that turns painfully ideological, including male nudity to balance the female nudity of the preceding. Then the play turns darkly contemporary in a frigid modernist scene in an elevator, where each isolated corporate drone is terrified of the boss above. The CEO? God? Whatever, it feels like today.

We end with the three voyagers surveying the wreckage of their journey. They represent liberte, egalite, fraternite -- "three whores," we're told. Ideals can imprison as much as oppression. Then come chilling final twists (depending where you stand on class war), taking us back to those musty books.

And did I mention the Angel of Despair (Shammen McCune)? "Death is the mask of revolution," we learn -- or is it the reverse?

Larry John Meyers dominates, as Debuisson must, with his aristocratic hauteur, childish whine and stentorian insistence. He's well-balanced by Tony Bingham's stumblebum prol, who's not as thick as he seems, and Larry Powell's poignant noble savage who trusts that his day is coming, no matter how many centuries it will take.

Among the others, Ms. Dixon is an artful knockout, take that how you will, and the whole company handles its bizarre theatrical tasks with aplomb.

For those who like their theater inventive and their ideas demanding, who would ever miss a Quantum show? Especially this. I hope Mr. Harris has found a new artistic home.

First Published: April 29, 2010, 8:00 a.m.