STAGE REVIEWS : A Stand-Up Comedienne’s Racial Sendup

One of the sketches in “Culture Shock” at Theatre of Arts depicts the slim pickings black women find among men of their race. In the satire, the world of black men, through attrition and self-destruction, has been reduced to four male survivors, and they are paraded like chattel before the women who compete for them like contestants on “Love Connection.”

Entitled “Endangered Species,” the sketch is withering, one of a half dozen socially pointed vignettes that introduce a truly endangered species, the black female comic. In this case, she’s a young woman named Stacey McClain, who wrote and directed this show, which features two 15-member, alternating casts.

McClain doesn’t appear in the show but she has performed as a stand-up comic, and is obviously a gifted writer and director. Some of her sketches are a touch too didactic (such as one on AIDS prevention), but when she is deflating hypocrisy (such as a black woman’s effort to act white in “Color Blind” or the bewigged “Weave Sisters”) the show is a riot.

In fact, “Culture Shock” is really first (female) cousin to George Wolfe’s “Colored Museum.” McClain also is working from some of the generic roots of Spike Lee. But, ultimately, she brings an individual stamp to material that isn’t nearly as derivative as it is fresh.

Black female satirists are not exactly in abundance, but what salvages McClain is her goodwill, her lack of anger, and her sense of cultural radar (characteristics, incidentally, which earmark Whoopi Goldberg). Although it unfortunately has to close Sunday, the show is also a small boon to Theatre of Arts, which had a recent hit with “Willie and Esther.”

The production’s standout performer is the tall, wide-eyed Valencia Roner who introduces each sketch with a telling stand-up characterization that manages to be beguiling and bitingly humorous at the same time. Among the most hilarious sketches, a fierce Carlotta Adams in “Yo Sister” brings down the house as a no-nonsense woman on a park bench who exposes a dude (Aaron Braxton) insistent on pigeon-holing black women as “African sisters.” “I’m not from Africa. I’m from Louisiana,” the woman growls.

Like a diamond in the rough, you don’t want to buff up this show too much. But it merits a future.

“Culture Shock,” Theatre of Arts, 4128 Wilshire Blvd., Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 and 8 p.m. Ends Sunday. $15 ; (213) 480-3232 or (213) 960-7919. Running time: 2 hours.