STAGE REVIEW : Groundlings’ Female Players Step to the Fore

Most improv groups in town are male-dominated, and the Groundlings sometimes seem that way. But not in “Groundlings Spectacle on Ice,” the latest revue from the Melrose madcaps.

At a recent performance, women Groundlings outnumbered the men, 8-4. Add the gender of the new Groundlings revue director, Nancy Bacon, who is a more visible host than most of the group’s directors have been, and the Groundlings begin to look like a women’s group.

Which isn’t to say that the overall quality has changed, for better or worse. This revue starts out strong and maintains a steady stream of laughter until shortly after intermission.

The show opens with “the Groundling Sisters” (Kathy Griffin, Nancy Dye and Deanna Oliver), who warbled a razor-sharp improvised ditty about a macho guy from New Delhi. In “Password,” Oliver and Mindy Sterling portray another set of funny sisters, these of indeterminate foreign origin.

Jay McCaslin and Joan Leizman offer a couple of tart commercial parodies; Leizman’s, involving Mrs. Ollie North, is a stab at political satire, something the group normally avoids.

Melanie Graham is a hoot as a tubby plaintiff on “The People’s Court.” After intermission, it’s the gifted Oliver who keeps the laughs going as that aisle-prowling talk show host, “Oprivera Deannahue.”

From that point, it’s downhill. Enough already with the improvisatory game that involves changing genre styles; it’s hardly ever funny any more. And Cathy Shambley’s “Geriatrics” is sappy sitcom material. The rest of the show wasn’t much better (be advised, though, that the bill of fare changes; two of the three sketches mentioned in a press release announcing the show weren’t done at the performance I saw).

At 7303 Melrose Ave., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 8 and 10 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $12.50-$15; (213) 934-9700.