THEATER REVIEW : ‘Green Eggs, Groundlings’ Sketches Fun

What’s more fun than staying home and watching “Saturday Night Live”? The correct answer: a lot of things, but chief among them is “Green Eggs and Groundlings,” the newest installment of sketch and improv comedy at the Groundling Theatre in West Hollywood.

The title comes from Dr. Seuss, except that the troupe has replaced “ham” with “groundlings,” and for good reason. Directed by Deanna Oliver, the evening features several actors performing absurdist physical comedy, all the funnier when it remains unexplained and unacknowledged by anyone else on stage.

Two husbands (Jim Jackman, Roger Eschbacher) watch a wedding video on TV while nearby their well-groomed wives (Cheri Oteri and Maggie Baird) roll around and fight like 6-year-olds. A man (Will Ferrell) quietly excuses himself from an evening of company to sit cross-legged on the floor and concentrate intently on playing with cat toys.

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Other sketches exploit the conceptual as well as the physical. Chris Kattan is an unintelligible drill sergeant barking out orders that his soldiers strain desperately to understand. Jennifer Coolidge is wonderfully nutty as a woman recovering from a breakup, hanging onto sanity by a thread. That thread is cut when she meets a friend in a restaurant and boasts, “I’ve finally put Daryl behind me.” Her friend has bad news. “Daryl is behind you,” she points out.

Also memorable were Oteri as a hyperactive child on a plane who visits the cockpit to make hell out of the life of the preternaturally calm pilot (Ferrell). Mary Scheer is funny as an astronaut known as the first attractive woman in space. Steve Kehela is a cheerful Dick Button, who rather vindictively forces the bloody Kristi Yamaguchi (Karen Maruyama) to watch the video replay of a disastrous skating performance. The presence of a perky Oksana Baiul (Jennifer Joyce) doesn’t make it any easier for poor Kristi.

The show has its inevitable flat moments. No matter. Maggie Baird does a dippy imitation of Sheryl Crow, which inadvertently serves as a reminder--Groundlings are good when all you want to do is have some fun.

* “Green Eggs and Groundlings,” Groundling Theatre, 7307 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (213) 934-9700. Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 8 and 10 p.m. Indefinitely. $17.50.