Weekend Reviews : Comedy : Allen Gibes American Men

Tim Allen’s onstage persona is that of the manly man itching to break out his Craftsman tools and tinker on everything in sight. In his Friday night performance at the Universal Amphitheatre, however, Allen was more circumspect with his material--his attitude was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

For the most part, Allen’s entertaining set Friday (he also performed Saturday) focused on the concerns that made him such a hot ticket on the stand-up circuit a few years ago and provided the impetus for his wildly popular ABC sitcom, “Home Improvement.”

He dissected at length the differences in those on either side of the battle of the sexes, taunting women for their apparent underdog status in the ongoing war (“Men are pigs, aren’t they, women--it’s just too damn bad that we own everything!,” he mockingly sympathized). Quickly, however, Allen returned to a neutral, more politically correct corner on the issue, essaying men as befuddled dopes more swaggering than swift.

Allen also recalled some not-so-fond moments with family and friends, as well as childhood days filled with menacing small animals and the elderly. “Old people are better than pets for torture,” Allen observed, then provided anecdotes that suggested either one made for a pretty good target for juvenile pranks. Some audience members who were more recent converts to Allen’s humor thanks to the TV series were occasionally taken aback that his uncensored material could be so gleefully unwholesome.

But Allen has a unique knack for making even his comedy-of-cruelty riffs play with a certain innocence of spirit--perhaps it’s the influence of his TV show, perhaps it’s his generally droll, deadpan delivery. At every point at which he was most persuasively twisted, Allen reigned himself in with an unnecessary “That’s sick,” the very act of acknowledgment taking a bit of the edge off the joke.

Of course, Allen’s bread and butter--his funniest and most durable routines--celebrate the absurdity of macho contentment through power tools. Allen exulted such activities as accessorizing riding lawn mowers with overpriced hubcaps and headlights; making pilgrimages to Sears, the mecca of the home craftsman (“Whoever makes their tools also designs their clothes”); and installing a Harley-Davidson motor in the garbage disposal in order to make it a home wood chipper. Despite the stereotype and the familiarity of his TV program, Allen’s construction (so to speak) of the typical American male as a blue-collar guy happier pounding his thumb with a hammer than making nice at family gatherings remains an engaging and fairly fresh source for humor.

Allen then envisioned his own amusement park, Tim Al-Land, surmising that few women would patronize the place because of its determinedly masculine atmosphere. Allen used one potential attraction at his park, a tank ride, to delineate the differences between men and women: Women, he said, would complain about the tank’s drab color scheme; “Men will say, ‘Will this go through that wall?’ ” His amusement park would also boast a game that sounds, well, pretty fun, actually--launching compact cars into the air, and skeet-shooting them using anti-aircraft guns.

Lowell Sanders opened the show with often inventive takes on many of the usual concerns of stand-up comedians--TV, commercials, evangelists and other disasters and how sports announcers should never be named “Dick.”