‘American in Pasadena’ at Playhouse; ‘Broadway’ at Actors Alley; ‘Specific Hospital’ at Zephyr; ‘Sunshine Boys’ at Basehart; ‘Courtship’ at ANT

Dale Gonyea’s shtick is best viewed once. Viewed twice, his comedy tends to lose air.

I didn’t see his earlier version of “An American in Pasadena,” which has now returned to the Pasadena Playhouse’s Balcony Theatre (and decked with small boughs of Christmas folly as a holiday addition). What I kept recalling was a previous Gonyea show, “A 12 O’Clock Guy in a 9 O’Clock Town,” and how much funnier it was.

As a stand-up/piano comedian, he has a large terrain to play in: the clean-minded Midwestern naif finding himself in big cities and a modern world. His language is word-play (not just puns), his medium is the pop musical, and his gimmicks come out of a suitcase.

With “12 O’Clock Guy,” Gonyea seemed to be the ideal marriage of Garrison Keillor and Dick Shawn (to whom he dedicates his performance). Now that balance has tipped to the Keillor side. A centerpiece bit in the show is a sappy tribute to his granddad’s Michigan diner. Gonyea isn’t the first performer to be done in by an overdose of sentiment--only the latest.

He doesn’t tap his instincts as a topical comedian as often as he should: One of the evening’s highlights is a terrific tune (backed by Gonyea’s mean piano) about women’s biological clocks, and his Soviet jokes all work (“I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got a nice perestroika “). Gonyea is smart, but it’s hard to see where he’s going from here.

At 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, Tuesdays through Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 31, 6 and 8:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 31. Tickets: $22 ($35 Dec. 31 only); (818) 356-7529.

‘Broadway’

Philip Dunning’s and George Abbott’s “Broadway” is the kind of show where, when a guy says “Go peddle your papers!,” he means business. This is the comedy about rum-running and vaudeville in the Roaring ‘20s that Abbott directed again two years ago when he turned 100. Amazing, but even more amazing to think about when viewing Jeremiah Morris’ revival at Actors Alley.

That’s because nobody sits down for very long in “Broadway,” which almost becomes a movie in a proscenium. This is a story about people with a great deal of energy that flails unless it’s performed with energy.

For the most part at Actors Alley, it is, although the small stage area sometimes creates traffic jams. As Steve Crandall’s gangsters hustle inside the backstage area of the Paradise Night Club from a cold New York night, the Paradise’s dancing girls, led by dancing boy Roy Lane (Stuart Fratkin), are getting ready for another number. It gets tight at times, but there are no collisions.

The moments, though, when Roy has to switch from fighting Steve (Joe J. Garcia) for the hand--no, the soul --of Billie (Andrea Crissman), and trot back to the stage, are as sweet a show-must-go-on testimony as any all year. They’re almost as sweet as the boy-gets-girl ethic underlying “Broadway’s” charm.

Morris’ casting is not always as charming. Some of the dancing girls lack the vaudeville look and style, especially Crissman, whose voice and manner are resoundingly flat. Steven Barr’s detective has the authority, yet looks too modern in Brenda Cooper’s otherwise smart costuming (which amusingly matches Gary L. Wissman’s black and white set). Garcia’s Steve, tugging at his coatsleeves once too often, is an impersonation of a type, but Fratkin’s is a real, heart-winning performance.

Reopens Jan. 4 at 4334 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees Jan. 7 and 21, 2 p.m. Ends Jan. 27. Tickets: $13; (818) 986-2278.

Specific Hospital If you want to take your out-of-town friends to a late-night diversion they’d never see back home, you could do worse than “Specific Hospital” at the Zephyr Theatre. It is junk-food theater, combining two L.A. pop culture outposts--improv comedy and the soaps.

The evening, at its creepiest, gives off the weird sensation that this is what people who know nothing about L.A. but its TV image think the city produces. But “Specific Hospital” is above all the product of local comics and some obviously hard-core students of afternoon video lust and revenge.

Since the 11-person cast is carrying on the plot from the past week, and since each has a firm character to hold on to, the improv seldom flounders--though the plot sometimes does. It concerns various folks at Specific General Hospital (alien surgeons, ditzy nurses, portly and innocent assistants) who work up a lather of distrust for one another, but not much passion. Incredibly, Episode 10 last Friday lacked even one bed scene.

When the plot’s left you dizzy, keep an eye on Eric Kramer’s Dirk Stern, Anna Miller’s funny Maggie and Sheila Traviss in a sly double role under Fred Vicarel’s direction.

Reopens Jan. 6. At 7456 Melrose Ave., Saturdays, 10:30 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $3.99; (213) 852-9069.

‘The Sunshine Boys’

Neil Simon doesn’t get much slighter than “The Sunshine Boys,” and Cynthia Baer’s production at the Richard Basehart Theatre doesn’t lend it any additional substance. The right actors in the roles of “Lewis and Clark,” Simon’s retired but still feuding vaudeville team, can make you think about your own aging process, and how well you’re handling it. The wrong actors play the feud for yucks alone.

Cliff Norton and Bernie West are somewhere in between. When Norton’s Willie lets us in on what really steams him about West’s Al--that he just up and retired one day after a show without any notice, thus breaking up the act--then Willie becomes a victim and something more than Simon banter emerges in his performance.

West, though, is never believable as a vaudevillian (even in Act II’s skit sequence), which undercuts his very believable retired gentleman. Loren Lester as Willie’s nephew/agent seems like he could become another Willie someday, but he’s an actor straitjacketed by a formula role--which goes for the whole production.

At 21028-B Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. Tickets: $15; (818) 704-1845.

‘Paper Courtship’

Actors reading letters by theater people isn’t theater; it’s just that--a reading, as the program for “The Paper Courtship” at the American New Theatre correctly states. A lively reading, one hopes, especially when the letters are by George Bernard Shaw and his favorite actress, Ellen Terry.

The stilted stage arrangement has Edward Ludlum’s Shaw, nestled at his study on one end, and Vicki Bakken’s Terry cozying up to her dressing room vanity on the other. This puts a distance on what should be more than just an epistolary communication. It doesn’t help, either, that Ludlum and Bakken go for halfhearted dialects and a halfway resemblance to their subjects.

The other oddity is the choice of letters themselves (compiled by Richard Findlater). The reading concentrates on the 1890s, when Shaw discovered his playwright’s voice but before his great work. Terry’s nice but bland letters are impossibly overshadowed by Shaw’s, which are nevertheless only occasionally memorable. It is Shaw the artist writing when he prefers “a state of becoming” to “success,” but the wash of mutual admiration is a lot to wade through to be affected by such wisdom.

Reopens Dec. 31 at 1540 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Sundays, 2 p.m. Indefinitely. Tickets: $15; (213) 658-7217.