COMEDY REVIEW : Poundstone Talks Up a Storm, So Watch Out for Those Israeli Agents

One of the tricks to becoming a first-rate comedian is learning to recite the same material every night and have it appear conversational. Some top comics, though, are less anchored to their jokes and spend some time on stage actually being conversational.

Like Paula Poundstone. She is the kind of person who, striking up a conversation with you in a supermarket checkout line, would come across as so engaging, with such a delightfully tilted perspective, that you would hate to see the conversation end. Making her first appearance at the Improvisation Comedy Club in Irvine on Tuesday, she immediately took the crowd into her confidence by sharing an anecdote about getting lost for an hour on the way to the club.

She knew that she was in trouble when she saw a sign that said “Wildlife Preserve” (“A little upsetting,” she said. “I have no gun, I have no backpack.”), and she knew she was irritated when she stopped for directions and was told, “Well, first of all, you’re going the wrong way.”

From there, she moved with silky precision into her written material, confessing that she has trouble when people give her “that big, long list of directions . . . ‘cause I can only remember one thing at a time, maybe.” If someone tells her, “You go right up here,” Poundstone said, “I drive away while they’re talking. I go right up there, while it’s still fresh on my mind. . . .”

And she was off and running on a 70-minute laugh trek that covered a vast chunk of stand-up territory (navigating far more deftly on stage than she apparently does on the street).

Along the way, she addressed personal events (such as her recent Pop Tart binge, which she attributed to a “chemical problem. . . . I think it might have been a riboflavin shortage”), and she offered an assortment of ham-on-wry observations (about the curious practice of weightlifting, she noted, “They pick up everything and put it down again; to me, that’s indecision.”).

She tiptoed into topical turf occasionally, from Oliver North’s continuous conferences with his attorney during the Iran-Contras hearings (“I kept wanting to say to that lawyer: If you give him the answers, how will he learn?”) to “the guy who shoved his wife off the cruise ship,” first blaming the mishap on a gust of wind, then saying it was Israeli agents.

“It’s so easy to get those two things mixed up. . . . It’s pretty much going to change meteorology as we know it: ‘We got some gusty winds coming up through the Southland--wait a minute! No, those are Israeli agents.’ ”

There were times during this joke-filled journey when Poundstone peeled off for some pretty severe side trips, as when she revealed during a section on religion that she attends an atheist church: “We have crippled guys who stand up and testify that they were crippled--and still are.”

Another performer might have heard some groans, or at least momentarily lost the crowd with that line. Not Poundstone; she got a big laugh with it--probably because it came toward the end of her set, by which time her winsome and mildly out-there manner already had placed the audience firmly on her side.

She is so personable--yet completely (and deceptively) in control on stage--that folks can successfully get into her act whether they are reluctant to talk aloud, or too bold in doing so. In the former category: after repeatedly asking two giggly women in the front row if they had grown up in Irvine, it finally came out that, no, they were reared in Tustin. Poundstone’s instant quip: “Welllllll, that’s quite a journey. That explains the heavily laden pack mules out front.”

In the latter category, a woman was speaking quite loudly while Poundstone was in the midst of a bit--the height of comedy club rudeness. Some comics would have ignored her, hoping she would pipe down; others would have blasted her with a heckler line, intimidating her into silence.

Not Poundstone. She began interviewing the woman, learning that she had met her new boyfriend at Baxter’s (“The family that Hazel works for?”).

Poundstone epitomizes what is great and special about stand-up comedy. She isn’t just funny. She reinvents her act each night in such a way that you not only get to participate, but actually can help shape that evening’s show.

Headlining a great bill that also includes Barry Marder and Chuck Martin, Poundstone continues at the Irvine Improv though Sunday (except for Friday, when Kevin Rooney fills in).

The Improvisation Comedy Club is at 4255 Campus Drive in Irvine. Show times this week: 8 p.m. tonight and Sunday; 8 and 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $6-8. Information: (714) 854-5455.