A PAIR OF CLOWNS OFFER EVENING OF MIRTH, MIME

Richmond Shepard’s theater spaces in Hollywood have steadily become safe havens for the mime, the vaudevillian and the clown--undoubtedly due, in part, to Shepard’s own career as mime performer and teacher.

“The Art of M and M” (namely Karen McCormick and Jay Miller) is the latest invasion of the clowns on Santa Monica Boulevard, and much of it confirms that there’s nothing like a supportive atmosphere to bring out the best in a performer.

The moment McCormick starts her act--from a seat in the audience--she has her neighbors in the palm of her hand. Her persona, Mrs. Ruth Helfinhinder, art aficionada from Boise, Ida., is both fatuous and disarmingly likable. As she peels spuds to Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly,” we can see where McCormick is taking us: deep into the heart of aesthetic irreverence, where objects of previous regard are shown to be as silly as the clown’s floppy shoes.

For all that, a good clown who is about something is never silly. Indeed, some evoke an almost unbearable sadness. McCormick isn’t one of those; her own digs at woodwind players, ballet dancers and violinists are done by someone who appears generally content with the world. But her performance, while continually daring gravity and wrong notes to make their dreaded entrance, is almost always clean and disciplined. She knows, as in some wonderfully extended business with a giant trunk and its missing key, how far a routine can go.

The various references to Victor Borge, Bill Irwin and Carol Burnett are clear but subtle. They show a studious clown who’s done her homework and gone on to her own visions--and they include a hilariously harried stage assistant (Dia Wagner) who gets her own share of the laughter.

Jay Miller’s mime work, which begins the evening, is not yet comfortably married to his material. This ranges from baseball players to Thad the Thief and Miles West, private detective--characters both physical and vulnerable, and potentially comic.

While Miller shows good range and unobtrusive control of technique, his people’s actions don’t always make sense or compel us to follow them. They’re mostly thinly drawn stereotypes with few surprises in store. If nothing else, mime is a way of breaking down conventions theater is prone to set up for itself. Miller is in a theater where he can take risks; you can only hope that, eventually, he will.

Performances at 6468 Santa Monica Blvd. run Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., until Nov. 9; (213) 462-9399.