COMEDY REVIEW : Rock Steady Stand-Up, With an Impish Edge

At just 26 years old, Chris Rock has been a cast member and writer on “Saturday Night Live” since 1990, and now is the star of his own movie, the gangsta rap spoof “CB4.”

“You know what’s next?” Rock told the audience Wednesday at the Coach House. “A white girl. You can’t be a successful black man without a white girl.”

And another thing about fame: “You get famous, they always want you to go to a school and talk,” Rock told the crowd, confessing that he was not such a great student himself. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Stay in school--I didn’t, but you should.’ ”

Rock, who performs Saturday at the Strand in Redondo Beach, probably says a few things he shouldn’t. But while many comics take a sledgehammer approach to difficult material, bludgeoning “I can’t believe he said that” laughs out of their audiences, Rock prefers to throw well-aimed darts.

Slight of build, with a boyish face and a voice that almost squeaks when he brings home a point, Rock manages an impish spin on lines that might only sound callous coming from other comics. It’s wink-and-nudge comedy with an edge--he’s kidding but he takes an obvious delight in tweaking his audience.

He said Wednesday he’d recently been to an abortion-rights rally in Washington, “not because I believe in the cause but what better place to pick up women?”

Rock stayed with abortion for a few minutes, a prickly topic for comedy if ever there was one. He dismissed the abortion debate’s moral dimensions, saying the economic factor is the one that counts. “It’s not Roe vs. Wade, it’s broke vs. paid,” he said, breaking into a depiction of a woman weighing the cost of a child against the cost of abortion:

“Are we going to have Timmy . . . or get cable?”

The comic confessed a lack of skill with women (“I was a virgin until I was 18. I had friends who were grandparents at 18”) that has led to a professed admiration for . . . pimps.

“Pimps get all the girls. Pimps have confidence,” he said. “You never see two pimps at a party (saying,) ‘Go over and talk to her. I think she likes you. Don’t be shy--ask her to dance.’ ”

Rock often manages to be streetwise and whimsical at the same time, a tribute to his writing as well as to his delivery. The comic has reportedly done little stand-up work since signing on to “Saturday Night Live,” where his best-known character is black militant talk-show host Nat X, but if he’s feeling rusty it didn’t show Wednesday.

The stand-up stage proves a better showcase for Rock’s skills than both “SNL” and “CB4,” which Rock co-wrote and co-produced. Unlike some “SNL” stars who return to the stage and can’t resist the urge to do some of their TV characters, Rock did straight stand-up.

One highlight was a bit on being bused as a child to an all-white school, where he said he felt like the lone black character Franklin in the Peanuts comic strip (“25 . . . years and they haven’t let him say anything”).

Racial issues were not a dominant theme but a subtle touchstone in the act. “My mother never gave money to a white bum,” Rock said. “I figure being white is like always having $5. You’re always good for $5 if you’re white. Being black is like always being 50-cents short.”