THEATER : Oh, What a Beautiful Sendup : Crazies’ ‘Orangelahoma!’ Is a Witty If Not Always Fresh Look at Life

The Orange County Crazies, a comedy troupe that operates out of the Pacific Symphony Building in Santa Ana, may be the closest thing we have to a home-grown underground sensibility. Though the Crazies’ humor is not really subversive, it does make us laugh at the mental nausea that sometimes passes for sanity in suburban Southern California.

The Crazies’ latest show sends up the middle-aged singles scene, for example, with a running motif of mildly vulgar new lyrics set to the old romantic music from “Oklahoma!,” celebrating sex or, more precisely, the lack of it.

In “Boy Wants Girl,” the girl sings “I may be in heat/But I’m no piece of meat” to the strains of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” In “Boy Gets Girl,” the same sex-starved couple (Lauri Johnson and Roger Lee) meet hungrily at the office water cooler and sing, “People will say we’re in lust.” And in “Boy Loses Girl,” we hear “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top” transformed into “The Toys From the Porno Shop.”

The meatiest and by far the wittiest sketch in “Orangelahoma!” (a clumsy title for a fairly nimble show) involves a pair of women who make their living taking sex calls. They’re so popular with their kinky customers that they can’t get through a lunch break in the company cafeteria without having to answer the phone.

The sketch is hilarious largely because of the mimetic skills of both Johnson and Suzette Coger, the two most versatile performers. Its high point comes when Coger unexpectedly mimics the succinct, nasal bleat of a sheep to keep one of her regulars happy. Her uncanny special effects (“baa-baa”) manage to surpass Johnson’s Yiddish-accented Guilt-a-Rama (“Get your hands off that thing!”) for a client in need of a Jewish mother.

One fresh aspect of the show is its overall lack of political or cultural correctness.

Rich Flin sends up Latinos with a smartly done monologue about car thieves that plays right into the minority stereotype. Johnson does a wickedly funny spoof of a falling-down drunk, not unlike Hunter S. Thompson at his most loathsome. The drunk is a member of A.A. (Amnesty for Alcoholics) and DAMM (Drunks Against Madd Mothers). Her motto: “Better to be high than dry.” And Nina Arnold’s parody of a yuppie fat girl in quest of dinner has its moments.

This is not to say the material itself is always fresh.

Flin’s Latino parody turns out to be more energetic than smart. A sketch about lawyers as first-class jerks is too much of a social stereotype to surprise us. A lengthy game show called “It’s a Riot” is topical but not much else. And the occasional use of homophobic cliches is lamely unimaginative.

Nevertheless, even some of the mediocre sketches often strike redeeming notes of recognition.

While the overdrawn “Madrigal Mania” may not work, it has a nice twist at the end in its put-down of those family restaurants where the mere mention of a birthday or an anniversary brings on a horde of singing waiters.

“Women in the Know,” a recurring pull-out-the-stops set piece from previous shows, features a handful of men cannily dolled up as women. The improvisational aspect of the sketch misses more often than it hits, but Joe Troilo makes a particularly risque old dame from Leisure World.

In “Gilbert Gilhoolie,” meanwhile, Ron Ruhman plays a chef extraordinaire. With three women chosen from the audience to assist him (the Crazies are big on audience participation), Ruhman’s Doc Stud shows “how to cook to impress the honeys.”

Some of the best impersonations turn up in “Presidential Candidates,” a panel of husband-wife teams. Johnson does a priceless Barbara Bush as an eye-batting windbag in awe of her husband, barely able to talk because of the pearl choker at her neck. Lee aptly renders George Bush as a vague babbler whose hand signals are sharper than his lips. Robert Morris plays saxophonist Bill Clinton, and Arnold gives a portrait of Ross Perot’s wife as a ventriloquist dummy.

All in all, despite a few tired clunkers that fail to redeem themselves on any level--such as “Telethon,” a sketch about raising money for ‘90s yuppies--this Crazies show provides enough entertainment to make it worth the price of admission.

‘Orangelahoma!’

A presentation of the Orange County Crazies, produced and directed by Cherie Kerr, written by the troupe. Technical director: Ron Schryer. Musical director: Phil Carlton. With Nina Arnold, Suzette Coger, Rich Flin, Roger Lee, Eric Halasz, Lauri Johnson, Sherry MacGregor, Robert Morris, Ron Ruhman and Joe Troilo. Guest performer on Aug. 8 was Tina Arana. Continues Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Aug. 29 at the Pacific Symphony Building, 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana. $12 to $15. (714) 840-1406.