‘Mustard’ at Tamarind; ‘King of Hearts’ at Tiffany; ‘Street Theater’ at West Coast; ‘Silent People’ at Art Theater; ‘Einstein’ at Shepard

The musical “Mustard” at the Tamarind Theatre combines the plot of a Hope-Crosby road picture with the exuberance of a Garland-Rooney showstopper.

The material, centered on two Broadway song-and-dance guys who find romance and musical adventure in Dogpatch country, is broad and deliberately silly. But the execution, especially the zesty choreography of John Command and the byplay of the two itinerant hoofers (Wesley Mann and Christopher Holder), is infectious.

The production defies the odds. First of all, it’s on paper yellow with age. Playwright-composer-lyricist Manley Marks literally pulled the show out of a trunk. He wrote it in the 1940s while a screenwriter at Universal, first staged it in the early 1950s under the title “For Land’s Sake” at the Las Palmas, and refurbished it under its current title at the Matrix in 1976.

Now it’s been spruced up again, with a clever backstage Broadway opening scene and additional words and music by co-executive producer Max Croft, director Henry Polic II and the show’s grinning live pianist, Gus Pappelis.

The ghost of “Li’l Abner” cartoonist Al Capp hovers over the proceedings. Three hillbilly gals help propel the energy: the angelic-voiced Stacey Scotte, the outrageously black-silk-gowned schemer Kimberly Chase, and the willowy Gigi Rice, whose frenetic ensemble dancing and beaming nonverbal demeanor almost steals the show.

Co-star Mann, a wall-eyed, sublime performer, enjoys a sharp dance touch. Holder, his preppy partner, has Dennis Morgan down pat. In fact, wasn’t this a Dennis Morgan-Alice Faye movie once? It should have been.

At 5919 Franklin Ave., Sundays through Wednesdays, 8 p.m., through Oct. 4. Tickets: $10; (213) 466-9714. ‘King of Hearts’

Here’s another ‘50s comedy, originally staged on Broadway in 1954 (with Cloris Leachman and Jackie Cooper) and reportedly making its debut here. It’s not hard to see why L.A. had to wait 35 years.

A popular, egomaniacal cartoonist (Edward Winter) has become a tad crazed with his own profundities (was this a spoof on Al Capp?). Meanwhile, his fiancee and lowly cartoon helper (Courteney Cox and Michael Spound) fall in love under his nose. The cast includes a 9-year-old adopted boy, a large dog and a cynical cartoon syndicate chief (the wry Larry Randolph, who also directed).

The show is a case study of a lightweight comedic formula that has all the substance and polish of Formica. Beware of confusing this “King of Hearts” with the cult film of the same title.

What’s perversely ordinary about this production at the Tiffany is that its acting and its craftsmanship (the playwrights were Jean Kerr and Eleanor Brooke) are so emblematic of solid prime-time sitcoms. That’s not bad news--Spound as the smitten cartoonist is excellent--but it’s not invigorating either.

The New York apartment set fails to capture the sense of working cartoonists. It would be fun to see some real drawings instead of the back of a drawing board.

At 8532 Sunset Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., through Oct. 29. Tickets: $16-$18; (213) 652-6165. ‘Street Theater’

The L.A. premiere of Off-Off-Broadway pioneer Doric Wilson’s “Street Theater” is overdue, given the playwright’s impact on gay theater and the play’s depiction of events that spelled the formation of organized gay liberation in this country.

The material covers the carnival-like atmosphere of drags, lesbians, leathermen, flower children and vice cops trolling Christopher Street in the hours before the watershed uprising when gays fought police at the notorious Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village on the night of June 27, 1969.

The straight world hardly noticed that the dawn of gay activism had begun. The production at the West Coast Ensemble features some risible comedic acting (particularly from drag queens Mario Gardner and Keith Westmoreland) and strong dramatic work from John Beckman’s “practicing heterosexual” and Andrew Mersmann’s vicious undercover cop.

But playwright Wilson, who also directs, fails to sustain an arc or momentum in this catalogue of street characters sniffing one another out in endless whirlpools of short encounters.

Squalor and comedy unfold in vignettes. But the dramatic payoff, the first signal of gay resistance to police brutality, takes much too long to reach and is over too quickly. Meanwhile, the variations on shopping for lust on the street become static and increasingly repetitive. The play lacks sweep and movement.

At 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m., through Oct. 22. Tickets: $10-$12; (213) 871-1052.

‘The Silent People’

A new theater group, the Los Angeles Art Theatre, is staging “The Silent People,” written and directed by Darryl Shelly. It’s grueling, talky and pretty incomprehensible.

Once you get over impatience with this pompous play, the wondrous curiosity is that the production values and the acting create a destitute world that enjoys the slap of artistic imagination.

Shannon Hile delivers a vigorous performance as the edgy protagonist, a homeless prostitute hanging on by a thread to a dream. Jerzy K. Cybulski’s set and lighting design plunge you into a makeshift camp for the homeless that suggests a post-holocaust wasteland. The other actors--ailing windbag Bennes Mardenn, sinister Ted Haler, Jean Dorl as Lady Tramp and adolescent Greg Farnese--convey a gritty texture.

The future of this company is to avoid plays that sound like second-hand imitations of Samuel Beckett. The group has promise if obtuseness doesn’t get in the way.

At 11305 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $10-$12. (818) 763-3101, ‘Einstein and the Polar Bear’

Thomas Burke directs, stars in, and does the sets and sound effects for the comedy “Einstein and the Polar Bear” at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. Apparently, he has too much to do.

Playwright Tom Griffin lamely toys with the psychology of loneliness in a creaky, defiantly unromantic comedy. A young woman (Denise Poirier) fakes her way into spending a night with a reclusive novelist living in an Upstate New York bookstore. The writer’s senile father (Gary Ash) keeps mumbling that he knew Einstein. A polar bear is also loose from the local zoo.

A loopy mailman (Michael McGlone) briefly enlivens the play, but the supposed romantic leads, Burke and Poirier, are devoid of any mutual spark. They remain unpleasant to the hokey end.

At 6468 Santa Monica Blvd., Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., through Oct. 15. Tickets: $12.50; (213) 466-1767.