STAGE REVIEW : Not Even Tepper’s Off the Hook in ‘kirbysomething’

Nearly everything about Kirby Tepper’s cabaret act, “kirbysomething,” mocks the show’s subtitle, “Songs of Great Depth.”

Tepper’s a stand-up comic who generally sings instead of telling jokes. His targets include leaf blowers, designer-water devotees, Southwest style, Michael Feinstein, Mandy Patinkin and yes, his own grandmother. It’s clever, but hardly deep.

His suggestive eyebrows rise readily to a smirk. His face, normally fairly handsome, wrinkles up with periodic attacks of aggravation and desperation. If that other musical cabaret jester, Dale Gonyea, plays the imp, Tepper plays the neurotic wise guy.

Yet his barbs aren’t aimed just at others. In “kirbysomething,” the current entry in the Upstairs at the Pasadena Playhouse cabaret series in the theater’s Balcony Theatre, Tepper doesn’t flatter himself. “When my inner child is starting to whine,” he admits in his opening number, he goes out and does “something self-destructive” and feels a lot better for it.

He sings two songs about his own inclination to talk on and on, mostly about himself. He describes the experience of being an over-the-hill “boy wonder.”

His musical comments on sexual isolation in the age of AIDS sound as if they’re straight from his heart. He does a rowdy tap dance, inspired by experiences with phone sex from a 976- line that’s reminiscent of something that lonely guy Steven Banks, whose act has also played this hall, might have done.

Finally Tepper drops all vestiges of cynicism in a surprisingly stirring go-for-it finale, “Mercury.”

Tepper’s expressive voice cracks a little in the upper registers, and his spoken anecdotes are just unpolished enough so as not to sound slick. But he’s got a crew of pros backing him up: musical director and pianist David Snyder, backup singers and foils Kimberle Baxter and Michael Heitzman, lighting designer Kevin Mahan--all overseen by producer-director David Galligan.

It’s a well-matched companion piece-in-miniature to the mainstage musical revue at the Pasadena Playhouse, “Closer Than Ever.” Both shows will probably find their most enthusiastic adherents among the same thirty- and fortysomething crowd.

* “kirbysomething,” Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. Ends Sunday. $20. (818) 356-PLAY. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.