Stage Reviews : Comedian Reno Repeats HBO Special at MOCA

Reno, a manic New York stand-up comic, has somehow found a forum at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Her “Reno Enraged” garners a few laughs. But it’s nothing special. The big question is why Reno has been blessed (or stuck, depending on your perspective) with the “artist” cachet and the MOCA stage, while most similar comics ply their trade at the Comedy Store or the Improv.

Perhaps she physically needs a larger stage than she might get in a club? It’s true that she whips around the stage like a whirlwind.

But all this physicality isn’t matched by much intellectual energy. Reno makes quick jokes about familiar subjects--New York, sex, polyester parents--and then quickly moves on.

The closest she comes to a significant statement are a few comments about the irony of the juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty in New York. The closest she comes to establishing comic momentum is near the end, when she examines the various names people use for women’s private parts and the inability of women to make their own personalized obscene gestures.

Despite her yuppie-bashing and tired jokes about nouvelle cuisine, she admits a predilection for expensive restaurants. That this is her most ambivalent moment is a measure of her act’s superficiality.

Stand-up comedy is, of course, a form of performance art. If MOCA were to provide a stage for comics who haven’t yet been able to appear at commercial comedy venues, for whatever reason, it might serve a purpose. But Reno already did her own special on Home Box Office--and her routine here barely deviates from what appeared on that cable network last fall.

Ah, but that was merely cable--perhaps that’s where MOCA draws the line. But why stop there--why not turn the museum’s Ahmanson Auditorium into the Yuk Room and book Roseanne Barr and Joan Rivers? Any worries MOCA might have about audience development would disappear as soon as the word went out.

At 250 S. Grand Ave., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 4 p.m., through March 4. Tickets: $12; (213) 626-6828.