‘Automatic Pilot’ at Actors Alley; ‘Graceland’ at Beverly Hills Playhouse; ‘Assortments’ at Gardner Playhouse; ‘Godman’ at the Richard Basehart

The lights go down, the drum rolls, the cymbals crash and the spotlight shines on a female stand-up comic named Charlie (Sandy Rosenberg) who uses one-liners like live ammunition.

The opening of Erika Ritter’s “Automatic Pilot” sets us up for a rapid-fire, caustic comedy, maybe a feminist counterpart to “Lenny.” But Ritter’s writing never reaches the level of her aspirations, which are to let us see what impelled the Toronto-based Charlie to quit scripting for the soaps and start working for herself, as well as to let us in on what’s wrong with her.

Too much of it, under Jordan Charney’s workmanlike direction at Actors Alley, sounds like an extension of Charlie’s act. Introducing her ex (Steve Nevil) to Nick, her new boyfriend (Thomas Knickerbocker), she cracks, “This is Alan, my late husband.” Alan is now gay, and when he gives her some sober advice, she cracks, “You sound like my mother, only your voice is higher.” Luckily for Charlie, Alan has a thick skin.

Comics aren’t usually comic off stage--”Lenny” is a case, albeit extreme, in point. The wash of glib dialogue can be dazzling for a while, but “Automatic Pilot” finally makes you want to hear people talk like people instead of smart creations.

Even Gene (Rick Singer), Nick’s younger and more sensitive brother who falls in love with Charlie and looks like Mr. Right, always has the right snappy rejoinder at hand. Fortunately, the cast does its best to keep things fresh.

In the end, Charlie dumps all of her men because domestic bliss is ruining her act. That’s a sound insight that comes late in a play that needs more of them.

Performances are at 4334 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, on Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sunday, June 5, 2 p.m. Tickets: $10-$13; (818) 986-2278.

‘Graceland’

Elvis has a way of making people go crazy. “Has,” because for the two women waiting for the public opening of his mansion in Ellen Byron’s “Graceland,” Elvis lives.

For Bev (Kate Finlayson), he lives in her heart, even if it’s a little broken and hard-bitten. For Rootie (Lisa Otterness), he might just come back to life, along with her dead husband. But only if she gets into Graceland first.

Byron’s piece, at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, glimpses the tug-of-war between two fanatics who finally find the meaning of compassion--something Presley liked to sing about. It finishes in a warm coda, but some of the intervals along the way need work.

There’s a palpable lag halfway through the (roughly) 50 minute-play, as the women spar once too often for the slight drama to sustain such emotional outbursts.

If Byron’s work seems a bit too schematized, Finlayson and Otterness seem to fit right into the Tennessee campsite, watching for the doors to open or poring through some Elvis trivia magazine. Frank Doubleday has directed the pair for contrast (Finlayson projects a middle-aged cynicism; Otterness is a young, wide-eyed hick this side of “Lil’ Abner”), but not so much that it becomes a cartoon.

Performances are at 254 S. Robertson Blvd. on Sundays, noon (with 11:30 a.m. brunch), indefinitely. Tickets: $7; (213) 466-1767.

‘Assortments’

Rather than carefully arranged like a fine plate of hors d’oeuvres, “Assortments,” at the Gardner Stage, is rather formless.

There’s Lee Brady’s overly-solemn “Mississippi Medea,”() about a Southern woman who goes on TV, plays some guitar, and explains why she murdered her kids--which is why she’s about to be executed. Vicky Tierney suggests a nice woman over her head, but her guitar licks need some work.

Next, a professor emits a word spew in John Angell Grant’s “Language as Communication.” Grant is going for a supposedly witty mix of Gertrude Stein-isms and the most impenetrable academic treatise on semiotics imaginable, but the joke quickly expires. Kateri leaves the unintended impression of a student posing as one of her teachers.

Stein comes up in Irene Maupin Oppenheim’s “Decrescendo”. Name-dropper Nan (Kateri) claims to have met her, but that’s nothing next to the concert pianist (Dane M. Ince ) she and Elsie (Tierney) have kidnaped. What lengths fans go to in order to be with their idols--there’s comedy in that, maybe even a full-length play. But this ends up being a not terribly funny teaser for that play-to-be. Only Ince gets into the throes of his character.

Ince is even better in Robb Walsh’s “A Little Talent,” a clever morsel that lampoons mediocre artists who never give up. Ince’s artist finally does, and he’s bound to make would-be artists in the audience nervous.

Kasey Arnold-Ince directed.

Performances are at 1501 Gardner, on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., through June 18. Tickets: $8; (213) 664-4540.

‘Godman’

Rick Najera’s “Godman,” which closed unexpectedly last Sunday at the Richard Basehart Playhouse, is a play that’s neither comedy nor tragedy, yet trying to be both.

The situation sounded terrific on paper. A poacher of ancient Maya artifacts is caught in the crossfire of an insurgent war in a Central American country. The only foreigners allowed to remain are priests and doctors, so the poacher (Henry Darrow) poses as a man of the cloth.

It’s a plot worthy of Graham Greene, but the play becomes sidetracked from its moral implications into a series of choppy scenes dominated by comic exchanges which fall short of dark satire. Marc Tubert’s army captain, for instance, is too broadly played and written to be taken seriously--which, at key points, he must be.

The show’s closing is sadly premature, because with more textual refinement and more performances for Lillian Garrett’s cast, “Godman” might have begun to reach its potential.