Theater Reviews : In 3 Hours, ‘Coca Cola’ Loses Fizz

FULLERTON — When Ron House and Diz White created “El Grande de Coca Cola,” they probably didn’t realize how many royalties they’d rake in down through the years. This show is one of the audience-pleasers of all time.

An evening of entertainment at the Cafe Hernandez, always guided over enthusiastically by the buoyant Senor Don Pepe Hernandez of the estimable Familia Hernandez, is tongue-in-cheek, but that tongue rarely gets in the way of the laughter.

There is no plot. Don Pepe harangues “ el senores y senoras “ with his sleazy lounge-lizard emcee shtick and introduces the acts in his show like so many tortilla on a conveyor belt. The fact that everyone speaks a sort of ersatz broken Spanish (English rarely peeks its head around the tacky shower curtains that form the cafe’s backdrop) is a sort of running gag that adds to the fun.

At Cal State Fullerton, Justin Fletcher is a riotous Don Pepe, his plastic grin a constant sign of the character’s pride in presenting such ludicrous entertainments, his knowing leer a sign that the Don’s personal agenda goes beyond what’s on stage at any given moment. An accomplished ad-libber, Fletcher also maintains a libidinous gleam in his eyes that gets its own laughs.

Under the co-direction of Donn Finn and Lara Teeter, who also did the choreography, the show bubbles and bounces joyously with breathless abandon. The evening’s problem is its length: At almost three hours, it is about twice as long as its one-joke premise can bear. The script allows for any tacky acts producers want to throw in, and the program acknowledges “additional material created by the CSUF company.” The troupe members lost their heads at some point and sometimes lose the viewer with the more pointless entries, such as a dim and lengthy interlude about Toulouse-Lautrec.

The directors have been careful to space out the goodies so that there’s always something to look forward to. The funniest of the acts--a trio (Michael Miranda, Memo Flores and Rafael Loza) as baldly bad as it is hilarious--happens to appear twice. In Act I, wearing lederhosen and carrying beer steins, the three are announced as a German group called the Three Hamburgers, with as skewed a rendition of “Danke Shoen” as they can manage and ‘50s backup choreography to match. When they return later, they only have added blond wigs. Their act, now the Three Frankfurters, is even funnier because it’s the same as it was before.

Eve Himmelheber gets laughs as a blindfolded mind-reader; Sutan Amrull is the tallest Carmen Miranda who ever tossed a bowl of fruit in a headdress, and the Familia Gonzalez are acrobats whose incompetence is memorable. A full-stage, full-company Spanish dance version of “La Bamba” that ends in anarchy, and Don Pepe’s own Spanish-dubbed impressions of Jaime Cagney and Karloff’s Frankenstein monster ( “Viva! El viva!” ), are among the many high points in the show, but after a while they seem fewer and farther between.

* “El Grande de Coca Cola,” Arena Theatre, Cal State Fullerton Performing Arts Center, State College Blvd. and Nutwood Ave., Fullerton. Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $6. (714) 773-3371. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes. A Cal State Fullerton Department of Theatre and Dance production of the comedy by Don House and Diz White, directed by Don Finn and Lara Teeter, with additional material created by the CSUF company. Musical direction: Jeff Fairbanks. Scenic designer: Michael Roberts. Lighting designer: John Vasquez. Costume designer: Sutan Amrull. Makeup/hair: Alisha Farina. Sound: John R. Fisher. Stage manager: Michael Cox.