Orange County Crazies’ ‘You’ll Never Work’ Doesn’t

Throughout “You’ll Never Work in This Orange Again,” Orange County Crazies’ producer-artistic director Cherie Kerr asks members of the audience if they’ve ever fired anyone. Answers flow freely, and descriptions of the unfortunately sacked provide cast members with the characters that show up later.

At the end of the revue, actors appear onstage in costumes vaguely approximating those descriptions and answer audience questions. Some of their improvised comments are amusing, but most of these sketches are colored by questions of taste.

Poking fun at a psychotic maid or a “deaf and dumb” pizza driver wouldn’t seem to really be a ‘90s thing. But with the Crazies it is, and their audience appears to eat it up.

Then there’s a sketch about a Latina maid who steals everything that’s not nailed down. Big laughs. Two mattress-shaped and ignorant female peasants from Eastern Europe camp it up as a singing team called the Bosniettes. There’s little point to such crude gags.

A number of sketches spring from clever ideas, but, as with a lot of comedy, there is no punch line. Maybe if the endings were written first. . .

One of those is “Mister Roberts’ Armory,” written by Kerr and Eric Halasz, a sendup of television’s Mr. Rogers, in which Halasz scores by purveying guns and explosives in preschool terms.

Another finds Joe Aiello and LeOnna Small doing an “Orange County Talk Show.” It’s a bit overdone and overwrought, but both Aiello and Small are funny, despite overly familiar material by them and Kerr.

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Halasz and Aiello rise above the rest of company, as does Eric Duncan, whose improv responses are intellectually a cut above everyone else’s.

Two videos, along with most of the sophomoric material, are pointless. One is a biography of Robert Citron, which could have been very funny had it not been a one-joke affair, or if that joke had a stronger point.

* “You’ll Never Work in This Orange Again,” Orange County Crazies, Pacific Symphony Center, 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana. Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 20. $15. (714) 550-9900. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

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An Orange County Crazies production, produced and directed by Cherie Kerr. With Joe Aiello, Nina Arnelli, Bearsy, Erik Duncan, Eric Halasz, Lizanne, Danielle Neel, LeOnna Small. Line producer: Halasz. Musical direction: Mark Ferguson. Technical direction: Dean Hargrave. Stage manager: David Gassen.