Attending a piece of political theater should feel like a dangerous proposition. But all too often, activist art is just hectoring and sloppy, substituting intensity for quality. Hieronymous BANG!’s “I’m Gonna Kill the President: A Federal Offense,” places danger at the heart of the show.

The gimmick is that this is actually a dangerous, indeed, illegal gathering. From the furtive outset, meeting fellow audience members on a curb in Alphabet City, to the stomach-churning finale, the pseudonymous director makes the audience feel genuinely at risk – a real trick in our imperviously narcissistic age. It lampoons the right and the left with equal glee, and even pokes fun at its own portentousness.

The story is agit-prop thin – Fifi, a young college student looking for an identity, hooks up with Skip, a grizzled radical activist on the run. Will they succeed in capturing the president? Can “The Man” in his many incarnations seduce Fifi from Skip’s side? The cast, though, make memorable people out of these comic creations – from a slightly dazed looking hippie-vegan-toilet bowl to a lovelorn “Massive Media” metaphor played by a googly-eyed sleeping bag.

Mr. BANG! (all names in the program are anonymous) writes with a prickly silliness, his one-liners sizzling and popping like 1930s screwball has come again. No pun is too base (“You can make chokes at a time like this?” to a man in need of a Heimlich) or cliche too mangled (“You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few hearts,” murmurs a dying femme fatale.) indeed, the show’s goofball zingers and adorable hijinks succeed so brilliantly as comedy that the occasional eruptions of actual anger in its belly come as a surprise.

Instead of preaching to the converted, the play puts the converted over his knee. Sure, he (or she) rails against the administration, but an even greater measure of contempt is reserved for the young left. The various activists can’t even agree on what pizza to order, much less create the new order – and one “artsy, edgy” film student would totally be interested if only Dawson’s Creek weren’t on.

These lunatics have their most virtuosic hour in a hat-swapping doozy of a scene, with one hard-working actor playing four guys on a conference call. But the real coup-de-theatre, the moment that pushes this show from political joke to a theatrical achievement, comes when the entire theater prank calls the White House.

It’s a powerful moment of audience-participation, but while you’re still buzzing from it, the show’s paranoia becomes your own. Are you in trouble? Are you on a list some where? It has been over 24 hours since I left the theater, and my nerves still haven’t settled down. Now that’s revolutionary.

***

Susannah York’s one-woman perambulation down Shakespearean roads, “The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women,” isn’t exactly an unfamiliar trip. Ms. York, star of stage (lots of recent Royal Shakespeare Company work) and screen (Oscar-nominated for “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”) splices together monologues and the occasional sonnet, taking a rather gentle approach to her meanderings.

This melange of personal history and favorite speeches doesn’t break, or even flirt with, the rules. Dressed in a tunic, bright-eyed and gamine, she is content simply to share the lovely language with us. Between pieces, Ms. York’s personal, interstitial material is quick and self-effacing. But unlike in Linda Marlowe’s “No Fear” and “Berkoff’s Women” earlier this summer, we don’t get glimpses of the dragonish heart of an actress. And Ms. York’s instructive insights into Shakespeare are perilously few.

Ms. York admits that Shakespeare, though a childhood favorite, has hardly been her life’s work. Instead, she has only tardily returned to him, realizing the joys of home after a long absence. Coming to him late gives her Gertrude penetrating regret, her Mistresses Page and Ford from “Merry Wives” a nice middle-aged viciousness. But her inexperience with the younger characters tells: Heroines like Juliet and Rosalind mince and make faces, shrugging at emotion or simply whooping with glee.

Making “love” her unifying theme casts Ms. York’s net too wide. What would not qualify? Two of her most deeply felt portrayals, Iago’s wife, Emilia and Lady Macbeth, she describes as lovers of truth and power, respectively. You can hear the conceptual stretch from the seventh row. Instead, emerging from the “ragbag” she assembles, comes a different through line – not on the “Ages of Man,” but the aging of Woman.

After a lifetime of experiences, the capacity for innocence is irretrievably lost. The heart-breaking pragmatism of Cressida, the cruel betrayals Cleopatra must make, these ring true in Ms. York’s mouth. But there is no going back. No matter her passion, her conviction, her wonderful talents with verse, the sweetness and selflessness of Juliet and Hermia sound false. She tells us, halfway through the show, that she learned to speak verse by shouting it into the rain. After a lifetime of storms, we find, the sweetest words no longer carry.