FRINGE FESTIVAL : ‘ROOM SERVICE’: SHOPWORN SILLINESS

How much of a tip should we slip to the folks who bring us “Room Service” at the Pasadena Playhouse?

They’re professionals. They get most of the laughs that are there to get. But only intermittently do they provide the distinctive personal stamp that you might expect in a five-star theater. And they tend to linger in the room too long after they deliver the service.

Perhaps that’s the fault of the play itself--the 1937 backstage farce by John Murray and Allen Boretz. It goes through three acts without ever coming to an irresistible comic head. By the end, the cast’s efforts to pump more yuks out of the depleted well seem frantic and forced.

Nor does the play engage us enough to make us demand anything more than the laughs.

For a moment, in the second act, we begin to care about the Russian bellman and would-be actor (Roy Thinnes), who risks his job in order to feed a gang of insolvent rowdies, under the mistaken impression that they might put him in their show. Their mistreatment of him threatens the play’s one budding romance, between the callow writer (Arye Gross) and the kind-hearted secretary (Christie Houser)--and we begin to care about that, too.

But as the third act opens, these conflicts vanish. It’s like an announcement that nothing matters in this play except the funny stuff.

So is it funny? Bits and pieces. The Brezhnev-like visage of the hotel executive (James Brodhead) as he tries to intimidate his customers into paying their bills, as he surprises them by roaring out of an opened door like a monster in a movie--that’s funny.

So is the sweat on the brow of his weak-kneed assistant (William Christopher) when he realizes that the check isn’t in the mail, after all.

At first, the gymnastic exertions of John Kassir as the producer’s general gofer and goof-off are very promising. We miss Kassir’s energy when he leaves the stage for long stretches. But then, when he does more of the same upon his return, it’s too much.

Tony Papenfuss, playing the director, has mastered the stony deadpan, and Patrick T. O’Brien also understates to comic effect in the minor role of a bill collector. Henry Polic II, as the agent of a rich potential backer, makes the most of his wary maneuvers around a giant moose head, as well as his later flashes of panic when he realizes that his chosen producer isn’t quite the smoothie that he claimed to be.

In that central role of the producer, Robert Desiderio is too much the smoothie. Even among friends and allies, he’s so suave that he makes impending disaster seem farther away than it is; he doesn’t appear to doubt that he’ll come through without a scratch. The only way this might work is the way Groucho Marx did it in the movie, with the sort of sarcastic spin that trumpets self-confidence. But Desiderio is no Groucho.

Otherwise, Stephen Rothman’s staging holds together better than the movie did. The movie was stage bound, with unnatural pauses for laughter. In a live performance, the actors simply move on if the laughter isn’t forthcoming.

Still, for the play to soar, that laughter has to come forth in more sustained flights than it does here. Occasionally the slack can be attributed to Rothman, as when two arenas of action--one upstage, one downstage--must compete with each other, and both are diminished in the process. But generally Rothman can be faulted only for placing so much confidence in such a shopworn vehicle.

Cliff Faulkner’s set is crowned with a vivid collage of Broadway neon. Susan Denison Geller’s costume design favors period accuracy over farcical distortion.

Performances are at 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 and 9 p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m., through Sept. 27. Tickets: $17-$25; (818) 356-PLAY or (213) 410-1062.