One of the neatest things about “The Gates,” if you look down on them from any elevation at all, is how they draw signal-orange attention to Central Park’s many walkways. In a space cleverly designed to let a visitor feel “lost in nature,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s installation flags the staggering ratio of Park to Path. Suddenly, it seems like a very paved-over place. Fifty-odd blocks farther downtown, the postmodern prankster theater group Les Freres Corbusier also tries to shake up our complacency about city planning – but with a bit more menace in mind.

Their newest construction obsesses as usual over dead power players, in this case: “Boozy: the Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses.” In the name of rehabilitating a historical figure (like in “President Harding was a Rock Star”), Les Freres Corbusier often sling some unfounded slander as well. This usually has to do with an alien plot or a dance sequence, and in “Boozy” they don’t change course.

Under a host of televisions replaying the many accomplishments of Robert Moses (The Clearview Expressway!), the apologetic playwright Adam Scully (Scott Hoffer) literally exposes his love for visionary architecture. With his shirt still up around his ears, he introduces the sweet-natured Swiss Le Corbusier (the elfin Daniel Larlham), Modernist architect, pioneer, and scapegoat. Le Corbusier, pressed by the Axis powers (played by rabbits) and a demanding girlfriend, discovers the sacred tenets of geometry just in time – but a screen alerts us that “This is not the Protagonist.” So, though he holds forth desperately on zoned housing, Le Corbusier soon sweeps off stage in a flurry of grinning Freemason dancers.

Postwar, the disciple most worthy of Corbusier is New York’s own Robert Moses (Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum). In his many Temptations and Last Suppers, Mr. Grigolia-Rosenbaum becomes a savior before our eyes. Throwing the design-by-committee types from the temple, he co-opts power, dodges public accountability, and saves the city from itself. With the same kind of dead-pan you’ll remember from college drag shows, the Freres Corbusier company spins itself into a frenzy of Moses-adulation. Indeed, there are “shovels in the lobby” so that we may continue his great work: the construction of an expressway that would obliterate the best bits of Greenwich Village and Soho.

LFC have no trouble making us laugh – rabbits in tiny helmets may be the international language of funny – but they’ve got an actual intellectual burr under the saddle as well. Moses clearly needs to be brought down, but the committee approach to urban design is almost as chilling as his egomania. Jane Jacobs (Nina Hellman) and her army of hacked-off housewives save the Village, but they also kill the great Modernist dream. Concrete plazas might be horrifying to look at, but there was real grandeur in Corbusier’s visions, a size we don’t seem capable of anymore.

Director Alex Timbers and his many co-conceivers occasionally trip into self-congratulation. They seem sure that kept sex-slaves on leashes are always brilliantly amusing, and in fact, they are only occasionally so. The actors who find themselves funniest are the least convincing, while the earnest ones like Mr. Grigolia-Rosenbaum and Mr. Larlham succeed. As much as they still exploit puerility, the company is moving inexorably towards sophistication. This production, designed by David Evans Morris with videos by Jake Pinholster, steps up the Freres’s visual game. If Juliet Chia’s lights hadn’t been so close to the bunnies (I kept being distracted by concerns for their comfort), it would have been a clean sweep.

***

29th Street Rep has staked out their territory, marked it, and now does a nice job of defending it. Preferring adrenalized action-drama, the bloodier, the better, the company’s tiny space has hosted a number of ugly bust-ups and brutal confessions. With Brian Dykstra’s “Hiding Behind Comets,” they bring sweaty-palmed suspense back to the stage. In a lean,predatory production,the Rep succeeds in a very macho counterprogramming ploy for a month burdened with Valentine’s Day.

Mr. Dykstra spins a tight web of suspense out of a narrow premise. On a lonely night near closing time, a stranger walks into a bar. The 22-year-old twins Honey (husky-voiced Moira MacDonald) and Troy (Robert Mollohan) are fighting about when to close up, bickering over Honey’s friend Erin (Amber Gallery),and finishing each other’s sentences. Observing them, the stranger Cole (Dan Moran) coaxes new heights of sexual frankness out of Honey and depths of anger out of Troy, but he does it all in the pursuit of a dangerous game of his own.

Much of the play’s pleasure lies in its startling twists and angry little jabs of revelation, so more plot would ruin its rush. First-time director David Mogentale has a killer instinct with the material – he plumbs his own experience as an accomplished portrayer of murderers. Keeping his cast lethally primed for action at all times, he manages to milk the last drop of dreadful anticipation out of Mr. Dykstra’s script. It helps that his company has such ease portraying physical menace. Mr. Moran has a weird blankness about him that means everything he does comes as a surprise, while the twins entwine so tightly it’s hard to sort them out, one from the other. Don’t miss this little symphony of savagery, but don’t eat immediately before it, either.

“Boozy” at the Ohio Theater until March 5 (66 Wooster Street, between Spring and Broome Streets, 212-868-4444).

“Hiding Behind Comets” until March 13 (212 W. 29th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 212-868-4444).