THEATER REVIEW : Lacking in Laughs : Sophomoric gags and simplistic plot smother the humor in Todd Carr’s ‘Dead Dogs.’

Somerset Maugham once said that a writer usually doesn’t have much to say until the age of 30. Even in comedy, you have to have something to say to make it work. Maybe it’s more important in comedy than in any other field.

Producer, writer, director and actor Todd Carr, whose “Dead Dogs and Other Tales” is playing at NoHo Studios, doesn’t have much to say in his evening of comic sketches. Even the one section he describes as “a play in one act” is little more than another sketch stretched to its utmost limit.

Most of what Carr has written for the debut of his Todd Carr Players in this totally unfunny show is pretty juvenile at that. He has a fascination with bodily functions (and non-functions) that most people left behind in junior high. In a bare-bones production, the biggest special effect is a whoopee cushion. Actors playing dogs sniff each other, one belches loudly and another comes on in great pain and complains of his doctor’s large fingers. Knee-slapping stuff, right?

More intellectual material features a teacher who shoots his students when they can’t answer a question, a bit about how funny it is to fool a blind man and a here-come-de-judge bit about a man suing a woman for sexual harassment (one more disclosure not worth the effort).

The “play” concerns a man with a dead dog on his porch and no inclination to do anything about it. That’s the whole plot, and it’s as sophomoric as the rest of the material.

As a director, Carr has little conception of what makes an evening of theater. What he does have is an ability for vocal characterization, a positive advantage that he shares with fellow cast members Jerry Goble and Brian Rosen.

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Where and When

What: “Dead Dogs and Other Tales.”

Location: NoHo Studios, 5215 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Jan. 15.

Price: $10 to $12.

Call: (310) 477-7121.