COMEDY REVIEW : Musty Material Fails to Prop Up Comic Bruce Baum at Top Secret

The knock on Bruce Baum has always been his reliance on props, that he can’t float a show without those buoys of low humor.

As is his way, Baum propped himself up throughout his 45-minute performance at the Hyatt Regency Alicante’s Top Secret Comedy Club Friday night, pulling out one visual exclamation point after another.

He donned his wacky rock band glasses (Kiss had to be the inspiration), he displayed his drawing of bearded sperm, he twisted his rubber record, he twirled his inflatable globe, he turned on his cymbal-playing monkey, he . . .

It’s Baum’s style, and you expect it. What was off-putting Friday was how old all these sight gags are. Baum’s been using the same props for a while now, many reflecting a dated point of view. He needs to visit the toy store again.

Baum should also update much of his verbal material. Several times he used jokes linked to impressions that have long evaporated in the public mind. Like when he did a prop-heavy, staccato interpretation of a few music videos, most from the mid-’80s.

All were pretty forgettable back then, and it wasn’t surprising that some didn’t register as Baum frantically tried to find a satiric tempo.

Earlier, he brought up that stale Coors commercial featuring Mark Harmon standing in a stream. Baum reminded the audience that the actor makes this big point about how Coors uses only the finest water. But Baum is thinking, “Hey, get your feet out of my beer!”

Never a great joke, but it probably was reasonable when the ad’s imagery was fresh a few years ago. What about all the current commercials worth bruising?

In defense of Baum, the small crowd at this small club did seem charmed by his performance. Most apparently were familiar with his career (a few murmured the punch lines a beat before Baum delivered them) and may have seen this as a live reel of the comic’s greatest hits. A passel of gags did go back to the late ‘70s, when Baum started performing stand-up.

And there was something pleasantly nostalgic about his bit on ‘60s “alternative theater,” where he assumed a very cool, very serious persona, lit his face with a flashlight, and dealt in a little nihilistic poetry babble.

That was weird, and it worked. Baum’s best moments surfaced after he slipped into a bizarre mode, with a timeless orientation minus the props. Like his reflections on going to the dentist: it’s not the pain of the drill that bothers him, but “when the drill gets stuck and the dentist spins around and around.”

A visit to the zoo is unnerving: Why do they always put the paranoid animals next to the cages with the hyenas and mockingbirds?

All this talk about rap music also got him thinking. Blacks didn’t invent it, whites did, but they call it “square dancing.”

Still, these were brief flourishes in an otherwise creaky dance. Baum, a comic who has shown he knows the steps, should look for some new partners.