STAGE REVIEW : ‘Your Supper’ Both Fast, Funny

If you think ‘50s pop culture has been bled dry, check out a brash new play, “You Gotta Sing for Your Supper,” at the Richmond Shepard Theater.

The characters are contemporary, but it’s ‘50s doo-wop songs that forge their lives. We meet these grousing, out-of-pocket actors on a hot summer night in a dump of a bedroom apartment in New York’s Upper West Side. Their careers are a shambles, but the pack’s host (playwright Ned Eisenberg) whips his buddies into new hope: hitting the streets as a doo-wop group.

This may sound like a dumb premise but it plays like a runaway train. That’s because director Bob Monroe stages it with terrific flair and playwright Eisenberg writes male dialogue so true it’s as if he had lived the whole thing himself.

These actors come on like pure Eastern blue-collar actors, all mouth and street weariness. And they’re quintessentially insecure. In fact, the show’s best touch is the brief visit of a blond, sunglassed California actor (Cain De Vore) who acts as if he just swooshed in off a surfboard. He not only laughs at the group’s doo-wop plans but casually remarks that he’s just landed a role on a soap opera as a New York Italian mobster.

“But I’m a New York Italian!” shouts the desperate, unemployed Sal (Frank Como).

Meanwhile, one of the group (Billy Strong) takes out his artistic Angst by constant limbering and striding around in sweat togs, and another guy (Timothy Britten Parker) has immersed himself in diction and breathing classes. His Shakespeare is impeccable.

This is one of the most sharply defined and amusingly observed comedies about actors seen in some time. But it’s definitely East Coast. These guys are the Pistons.

The characters come down hard on one another, sometimes painfully.

They don’t move from Marc Fisichella’s gritty apartment set (talk about grungy--when someone requests napkins for a pizza, he gets a roll of toilet paper). But we watch these not-untalented singers practice and finger-snap such tunes as “Unchained Melody” or “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” The ensemble work is evident.

How startling and refreshing to see a relationship play that has nothing to do with romance or sex or yuppies.

Performances are at 6864 Santa Monica Blvd., Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $12-14; (213) 466-1767.