THEATER REVIEW : ‘Not Without My Nipples!’ a Mean Spoof

The ripped-from-the-headlines TV-movie genre is fairly easy to parody. It’s even easier to just lampoon the casts of such movies. Benjamin Zook and Faith Soloway focus primarily on the actors who frequent these films in their mean little spoof, “Not Without My Nipples! The Made-for-TV Musical,” at the Coast Playhouse. It’s sophomoric and scattershot.

“Nipples” follows in the wake of “The Miss Vagina Pageant,” a production from Soloway and her sister Jill that was at the same theater a year ago. That one mocked another facile target, beauty pageants. But it whipped up a few moments of truly loony fun without attacking any actual beauty queens.

Here, Faith Soloway returns to ridiculing TV--an endeavor that brought her and her sister the long-running success of “The Real Life Brady Bunch.” Yet their “Bunch” show was scrupulous about using the actual scripts from the old TV series. There are no scruples in this one.

The premise sounds promising. The TV-movie in the story, also called “Not Without My Nipples!,” is about a high school girl who holds her family hostage, demanding that they provide her with breast reduction surgery. But don’t expect to see much of this “movie.”

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In the first half, we’re at the Malibu home of the movie’s producer, Chase Goldberg (Faith Soloway), who has gathered her cast for a “retreat” for reasons that never make any sense. The cast includes Meredith Baxter (Melanie Hutsell), Sally Struthers (Janeane Garofolo), Gavin MacLeod (Patrick Towne), Johnny Cash (Eric Waddell), Joyce DeWitt (Jill Soloway), Elizabeth Ashley (Zook) and Judith Light (Brett Paesel).

As they wait for the “real-life” hostage drama to end, they gossip, fornicate and take drugs. And they express themselves in grandiose musical production numbers that make fun of, well, grandiose musical production numbers. The satire here has little to do with the genre that is its ostensible subject.

Throughout, Baxter receives a series of threatening notes from a stalker who’s apparently in the house, thereby diverting the satire yet again, into mock-Agatha Christie territory. The actors’ antics are more frantic than funny.

Instead of showing the shooting of the movie, the second half skips to the “People’s Pick” awards ceremony, where the “Nipples!” movie is up for several honors. Finally, we get to see a few staged “clips” from the film. Still, more time is devoted to such tired topics as awards shows and individual celebrities than to the movie.

Faith Soloway gave herself the best lines in the script--when Goldberg turns her acceptance speech into a tearful declaration of the social significance of her efforts. But she isn’t much of an actress. And while the rest of her cast includes some talented sketch comics, the whole production has a thrown-together look that does none of them any favors.

* “Not Without My Nipples!,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 12. $12.50. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.