STAGE REVIEW : RA-RA-ZOO’S DOING IT ALL FOR LAUGHS

Ra-Ra-Zoo: They do it all. They don’t always get it right, but they do it all.

Where Le Cirque du Soleil says “Hoop-la!,” this bunch says, “Oh, dear.” It’s a natural reaction when there are only four people in one’s show, and two of them seem rather more cut out for office work.

I do not refer to the Ra-Ra-Zoo’s female component. Sue Broadway is in her element on a rope (fewer distractions up there than on the ground) and Deborah Pope does a determined somersault.

The gentlemen in the company are less athletically inclined. Dave Spathaky wears a business suit and is happiest when supervising the others. (“Perhaps if you’d try it anticlockwise. . . .”) Stephen Kent suggests a prematurely embittered secondary-school teacher: He is happiest when being abased (“Now, force me to get into the suitcase”).

Kent also plays the tuba--and they all play the drums. Their show won some good laughs and the occasional odd gasp Thursday night at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (they have two more performances today). But there were also times when they could have used an extra pair of hands, such as when the medicine clubs went astray in the big juggling-in-the-dark finale. Maybe they should be a quintet.

The traditional stuff isn’t what makes them special. Any fool can juggle medicine clubs in the dark. It takes a real fool to sit with a cup-and-saucer on one’s head, trying to flip a spoon into it.

A full cup. Overflowing, in fact. So that little rills of tea trickle down one’s head. But you must sit there until you get the silly trick right. It is a sublime image of British embarrassment (Ra-Ra-Zoo works out of London), and it deserves to become one of the permanent memories of the Los Angeles Festival.

The crowd also enjoyed Kent’s problems getting out of the suitcase--and, even more, his muffled comments from within on how foolish we must feel, staring for moments on end at a motionless piece of luggage. Catch him doing that on his night off!

In terms of pure skill, Broadway’s aerial act took the prize Thursday night, a spunkier and less ethereal display than Le Cirque du Soleil’s top-of-the-tent work. Spathaky’s plates-on-sticks number also went well. He had to keep two rows of plates spinning rather than the usual one, and Broadway made the challenge harder by disloyally sneaking in some alternative china.

The carnage here was planned. Elsewhere, you weren’t always sure. That lent a certain uneasiness to a show whose running gag was “nothing’s going right tonight.” But the gag itself has limits. The company has a richer joke right under its nose: female practicality versus male pomp. Why not go for it?

Last performances are at 2 and 8 p.m. today at LATC’s Theatre II. Tickets $20-$25. 514 S. Spring St. (213) 623-3771.