STAGE REVIEWS : Two Solo Outings--One Bites, One Has No Teeth

“Ya gotta get a gimmick,” sang Mazeppa the stripper in “Gypsy.” What else could explain the success of Beth Lapides, who has brought her solo performance/comedy act “Full Disclosure, the First Lady Campaign” to the Coast Playhouse?

During a free-for-all campaign year in which even an incumbent President is calling himself an agent for change, the idea that the role of a First Lady should be reconceived, or at least re-examined, has a certain merit (particularly with the phrase “The Year of the Woman” afloat).

In her program notes, Lapides lists all the media outlets that have featured her (and in which she’s given away all her best lines), including CNN, National Public Radio, the Joan Rivers show, People magazine and the Los Angeles Times. But what’s quickly apparent is that timeliness is all that her act has going for it, not content and delivery--unless her awkwardness is deliberate.

Lapides first appears in a dream sequence in which she’s standing before the Republican National Convention in her Maidenform girdle and bra, and then reappears in a short, tight, hot-pink dress with matching pumps and jacket, a huggable Barbie topped off with a vanilla-and-chocolate Carvel swirl of hair--the First Lady as glowing political bimbette.

The look is everything, and just about the only thing. Her jokes range from non sequitur (“I march to the beat of a different drummer; my drummer is so different, she plays the accordion”) to banal (“Sex? I’m for it”) to dated (“One-night stands? More than one, less than Wilt Chamberlain”). We hear echoes of Elayne Boosler, Judy Tenuta and Lotus Weinstock in her delivery, but what’s most consistent about her act is its uncertain, fragmented, halting quality. And its duddiness.

Lapides shares with real politicians the perverse ability to convert even a decent joke into a clunker (somehow her announcement that she represents the Surprise Party is not a surprise). And unlike the first-rate comic, she doesn’t know how to rescue mediocre material. Either she was nervous press night, or her material was under-rehearsed; in any case she wasn’t in control of her vocal tone and rhythm, or even her movement (she stood relatively motionless while lofting her jokes into the air with her arms).

Lapides has a fairly good list of performing and comedy credits, so you have to wonder if she has bravely and consciously set out to deliver a bad act. Maybe she’s telling us that, in an age grown familiar if not comfortable with cynicism, politics brings out the worst in everybody in its appeal to the lowest common denominator. Or maybe she’s playing on the current theme--a PC byproduct--that amateurism in art is acceptable for as long as the artist is sincere.

Or maybe it’s none of the above. Her funniest line of the night came during a post-performance Q&A;, when, after a few questions from well-wishers, she asked the largely torpid audience, “Not to compare you to other audiences, but are you, uh, OK?” The audience was, politely so. She had only plunged it into the inertia of boredom.

* Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 650-8507 or 660-8587. Mondays , Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., through Nov 2.

In contrast, Will Durst has plenty of original rough-edged material, which he’s continuously updating in his run at the Improv in Santa Monica, and which he delivers with the rapid-fire dyspepsia reminiscent of the late Broderick Crawford.

Durst would be right at home among the feverish hucksters in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” except that instead of selling Florida swampland to the unwary, he’s pitching some of the more preposterous--or at least peculiar--features of recent political events.

“You Can’t Make Stuff Up Like This” (“stuff” is here used as a euphemism) is the name of Durst’s act, and he serves up his material in a sharp, serrated voice and the febrile single-mindedness of someone trying to hustle his way out of a city about to collapse under siege. Durst was born and raised in Milwaukee (“. . . where beer is considered one of the four food groups”) and brings a Midwesterner’s flat, leveling gaze that takes in all the major players, regardless of his audience’s political persuasion (he recently polled the house to find that no one planned to vote for either Perot or Bush, and he went after Clinton anyway).

His in-your-face, take-no-prisoners style gets wearisome after a while, and he uses the unfortunate device of blaming his audience if it isn’t sufficiently convulsed by one of his jokes. You feel as wrung-out as he looks once he gets through. But he’s an equal-opportunity killer with a restless mind and a good sense of language (“Exxon, spanning the globe to teach fish new ways to breathe oil”). Where most club comedians give us attitude, he has bite, and at least one thing in common with the best: a sense of moral outrage.

Santa Monica Improv (Upstairs at the Cabaret), 321 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 394-8664. Wednesdays through Sundays at 8:30 p.m., second shows Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m., through Oct. 25.