STAGE REVIEW : ‘Kidding!’ Needs to Get Serious

The title of Jim Geoghan’s “Only Kidding!” at the Odyssey Theatre is all too true.

There is plenty of kidding here, some of it funny, but it’s “only kidding” by the end. The second half shies away from the thorny issues introduced earlier.

The first scene is in a Borscht Belt bungalow, where the uncomfortably aging comic Jackie Dwayne (Larry Keith) is offered help by an anxious young writer (Howard Spiegel) who works for the “Buddy King Show,” the reigning late-night talk show. These two have such different temperaments and ideas about comedy that their meeting becomes a head-on crash.

Next we’re in the basement of a Brooklyn comedy club, where a team of two young wise guys faces a career crisis. Wild, coked-up Jerry Goldstein (Paul Provenza) wants to accept the greedy management offer of the seedy club owner (Sam Zap), who has promised to get the boys on the aforementioned Buddy King show. But his more level-headed partner (Andrew Hill Newman) insists on holding out for something better.

Three years pass during intermission, after which the entire group convenes backstage at the Buddy King show. The neurotic TV writer from the first scene has become the show’s associate producer. The level-headed comic from the Brooklyn club has now joined Buddy’s writing staff. And who’s booked on the show on the very same night? Old Jackie and, yes, young Jerry, still under the wing of the slimy club owner.

During the first half, Geoghan glimpses at the wounded feelings and the hostility under the surface of so much comedy. In the Catskills scene, Jackie is consumed by hate. His young would-be helper never smiles; he makes comedy as if he’s making widgets.

The duo in the Brooklyn dive is livelier, but Jerry is powered by as much rage as Jackie. The motives of Jerry’s stable partner aren’t explored.

Then, as the second half begins, everyone seems happier. It looks as if the old conflicts have been forgotten--which, of course, wouldn’t make for much of a play.

Geoghan knows that. But he doesn’t know how to bring his issues to a head.

Without giving away exactly what happens, let’s just say that Jerry, the cokehead, confirms our earlier opinion of him as a jerk--to the extent that some members of the audience indulged in playful boos when Provenza took his curtain call, as if he were the villain in a melodrama. Which isn’t far from the truth--the plot takes a melodramatic, far-fetched turn, raising credibility problems on a superficial level and steering the play away from its deeper levels.

For anyone who saw Trevor Griffiths’ “Comedians,” one of the great plays of the ‘70s, “Only Kidding!”--with similar subject matter--is shallow. Geoghan backed away from examining comedy and comics in order to give the audience the momentary pleasure of being able to hiss the bad guy.

“Only Kidding!” gets laughs--but no more than you might hear on a good night in a comedy club, and not nearly as many as the other show-biz comedy “Road to Nirvana,” which preceded it in the same hall.

The cast of veterans from the New York production knows all the nuances, guided by the original production’s director, Larry Arrick. Perhaps because Jackie is the one character who evolves during the play, Keith--with his furrowed brows in the first act and relaxation exercises in the second--is particularly impressive. Karen Schulz, another alumna from the New York production, created three commendably detailed sets.

* “Only Kidding!,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 7. $17.50-$21.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.