‘Stand-In’ Delivers Wit With a Message

Keith Curran’s promising and funny “The Stand-In,” which originated at Naked Angels in New York last season, could serve as an object lesson on how not to end a comedy.

In the play, popular soap star Lester Perry (Hank Stratton) risks his career when he plays a gay character in a cheapie cable movie. Himself a repressed homosexual, Lester is forced to confront his own sexuality when he is “outed” by a militant gay journalist (K. Todd Freeman).

Curran’s first act is a lacerating social satire bristling with prickly wit. At his best, Curran has the surreal sexual naughtiness of early Terry Southern. In the second act, however, the laughs come to a screeching halt while Curran delivers his “message.”

In short, Lester learns that burying his true desires to conform to the strictures of society can be soul-destroying. Granted, this is an important message, but it is implicit in the satire. Curran needn’t lapse into self-conscious preachiness to deliver it.

Director Ray Cochran, who reprises his Off Broadway staging, along with many members of the original cast, knows how to keep the energy sizzling, fast-paced and distinctively glitzy. The wonderful ensemble includes Peter Gregory, Amy Hohn, Bjorn Johnson, Robert Keith Watson and Gareth Williams. Scotty Bloch, Kristen Johnston and David Pittu are particular stand-outs, no mean feat in this exceptional company.

Although overlong, inconsistent, and pedantic, Curran’s play contains all the elements of a comic masterpiece--in progress.

* “The Stand-In,” Hudson Theater, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends March 5. $20. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.