STAGE REVIEW : ‘Veins’: Savage but Worthwhile : The expletives in this comedy by Jonathan Marc Sherman won’t faze LATC regulars, but its assaultiveness makes you sit up and listen.

For the most part, “Veins and Thumbtacks,” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, is unquotable. Too many expletives to be deleted. This neither fazes LATC habitues nor convinces those who habitually stay away to come any closer. So, situation normal. But this savage new comedy by Jonathan Marc Sherman has the kind of in-character assaultiveness that makes you sit up and listen.

Remember Steven Berkoff’s “Kvetch” at the Odyssey where people say one thing then let us hear what they really mean? Direct comparisons don’t apply, but “Veins and Thumbtacks” has that same compulsion to shortcut the amenities and get on with the truth.

Eighteen-year-old Jimmy Bonaparte (Fisher Stevens) is a New Jersey kid with a big mouth and a crippled grandmother. He’s having a helluva time trying to enjoy growing up. His parents died when he was a tot; his grandmother who raised him (Beatrice Manley) needs to be looked after; he works at the supermarket while he goes to school. And now his girlfriend Annie (Elizabeth Berridge) tells him that she’s pregnant.

Jimmy’s Jewish and Annie’s Catholic. Wedding bells start pealing in Las Vegas where Jimmy flatly refuses to kiss the bride. It’s marriage, baby and divorce.

Down the tubes once more goes the American Dream. This is not “Leave It to Beaver.” But what’s different about the 24-year-old Sherman’s story is its surprising quotient of compassion. Through the messes, laughter and vituperation, we spot the causes of Jimmy’s defeat. This is a little boy lost, stuck with too much baggage he’s not equipped to handle--especially not his portion of that other four-letter word: love. It’s etched in acid everywhere he looks. And never having had much he’s not good at receiving or giving it away.

Jimmy goes in for predictable I-wanna-bes: He tries to become a stand-up comic, write a sexy whodunit, make it on TV--anything to break free, find himself, get away from his zombie pal Arturo (Bruce MacVittie in a deceptively fine cameo) at the supermarket, get away from the supermarket and those encroaching cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

Slob though he is, foul-mouthed though he is, we learn to like Jimmy, which attests to playwright Sherman’s singular achievement and to actor Stevens’ ability to convey this screw-up’s complexity. Behind the caricature and the barrage of insults is a real person. Halfway decent at that.

There is also a pretty good person in Berridge’s patient Annie and in that sturdy, non-loquacious grandmother, played by Manley with a kind of stoic wisdom. She knows this boy best and she can withstand him. The end of this comedy will have you in tears.

David Gallo’s surrealistic room, Kenneth Posner’s extra-sudden blackouts and Jon Gottlieb’s sound (every blackout is bridged by a galloping rush of music ending in a gunshot) contribute in specific ways to the wallop of the production. One must credit director David Saint, who staged the equally urgent “Once in Doubt” at the Cast Theatre and LATC in 1989, for avoiding sentimentality (a real danger at certain points) and catapulting these carefully orchestrated elements into a cohesive whole.

Those chilling gunshot blasts suggest the unspoken option of suicide; the sickly green of the room telegraphs a sense of suffocation. The result is mounting anxiety that we’re sucked into and share with the beleaguered Jimmy.

Not everyone may be willing to dive under the tidal wave of insults to get at Jimmy’s moth-eaten heart, but the battering is worth the prize. Sherman has a “young, fresh, angry” voice, much like Jimmy--and a lot more talent. You may want to hang him up by his veins with thumbtacks for the way he talks, but you wouldn’t want to shut him up. This is one foul-mouthed 24-year-old we want to hear more from.

“Veins and Thumbtacks,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St. Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; matinees, Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 24. $22-$27; (213) 627-5599. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

‘Veins and Thumbtacks’

Fisher Stevens: Jimmy Bonaparte

Beatrice Manley: Grandmother

Elizabeth Berridge: Annie

Noelle Parker: Tralice/Nurse

Bruce MacVittie: Arturo Constantini

William Marquez: Chapel Owner

Mercedes McNab: Wendy

A dark new comedy by Jonathan Marc Sherman. Producer Diane White. Director David Saint. Sets David Gallo. Lights Kenneth Posner. Costumes Marianna Elliott. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Nancy Ann Adler.