STAGE REVIEW : Homespun Fun Keeps ‘Freeway’ Moving

The program at Theatre/Theater describes its new Sunday night series, “A Freeway Home Companion,” as seeking “to bring a gentle Garrison Keillor-esque mode of bogus nostalgia, personal storytelling and local cultural reportage to Hollywood Boulevard in a 90-minute format.”

Stop right there, because I’m not sure about that word “bogus,” or the “ cultural reportage” (the italics are mine) or the “90-minute format.” The inaugural show Sunday lasted 2 hours and 15 eclectic but mostly delicious minutes. And since the program promises different artists from Sunday to Sunday, this length is sure to vary.

If you can’t count on 90 minutes, you can count on curious juxtaposition, disparate billing and plenty of talent--some seasoned, some not, all of it uncharacteristically (for these urban canyons) homespun and, yes, Keilloresque. Take hosts Mel Green and Sandra Tsing Loh, whose idea this is. They may still be working at being boisterously convivial, but there’s nothing uncertain about them when it’s their turn to be performers.

The “Freeway” format imitates a pop concert. There are the warm-up artists (some of whom may be trying out new material) and the main event. Opening night that main event was comedian-philosopher Shelley Berman, whose durable style in these (for him) novel surroundings was as laid-back as Los Angeles itself.

Primly dressed in suit and tie, he looked as if he had turned up at the wrong address. Like Alice in Wonderland, he took in his environs with mild-mannered bemusement. “It’s a nice little theater,” he said, casting a puzzled look around the dusty black walls and the stage hung in black drapes, “but it’s in mourning for itself.”

This tone of gentle banter was set well before Berman took the stage, by Lee Rosenthal’s obliquely tender (if nervous) tribute to his Dad, “Long Island Sound,” and by clog dancer Chamber Stevens’ “Clogging Lessons,” an equally moving tribute to his late mother and dancing partner, concealed as instruction in the joys of the art.

This twin burst of family pride had to be pure coincidence, because, barring Susan Marder’s mellow crooning (“Princess”), the rest of the show’s preamble was more distinctly declasse . It included Mel Green’s verbal guerrilla tactics in New York City (“Violence”) and his deadpan literal interpretation of blues singer Maxaynne Lewis’ terrific “Tail Dragger.”

But the pre-intermission capper was “N.Y., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.!,” Tsing Loh’s account of her complex fascination with the American movie musical, from “On the Town” to “West Side Story,” as galumphingly staged by Michael Koppy with Gracie Harrison as an all-purpose dame and Paul Erskine, David Warick and Rosenthal as Frankie, Gene and Jules Munshin respectively--among several others.

So by the time Berman came along, we were primed. But Berman’s style was much more subtle, urbane and polished, and his concerns far more recondite.

Aside from his middle-of-the-night-stream-of-consciousness account of an office worrywart strung out on the slippery corporate ladder, he delivered a punctilious recapitulation of a careful exchange of notes between him, a hotel maid, the temporary maid who replaces her, the hotel housekeeper and the assistant manager on the matter of bathroom soap.

You’d be amazed at how complex such niggling things can get. Not to say hilarious. But Berman’s crowning piece--in keeping with the earlier portion of the evening?--was yet another tribute to Dad.

We overheard this hard-working owner of a Chicago delicatessen’s complicated response to his son’s telephone request for $100. To spend on acting school. In New York. The calibrated blow-by-blow reaction, delivered in a Jewish accent as dense as gefilte fish, was enough to moisten the eyes.

You won’t get Berman again, alas, but other performers in the series include Linda Albertano, Steven Banks and Jan Munroe.

By the most circuitous line of reasoning since pretzels, last Sunday’s show was called “Arts of the Atlantic Rim” ( don’t ask). Next Sunday’s is “The Tattered Palms Gazette: A Living Journal of Our Neighbor-Wood.” It may have about as much to do with content as last Sunday’s, but it does get a B+ for imagination.

* “A Freeway Home Companion,” Theatre/Theater, 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Sundays, 7 p.m. Dark Dec. 1. Ends Dec. 15. $10; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.