A Fine ‘Mess of Plays’ Sketches Out Laughs

A more accurate title for “A Mess of Plays by Chris Durang” at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage would substitute sketches for plays. These are short pieces. Most of them are wickedly funny, though the entire event is no funnier than, say, a typical Friday or Saturday night at the Groundlings.

The big difference (other than the fact that there is no live band here) is that all of these sketches are by one man whose comic treatment of crazy families, Catholic doctrine and contemporary despair is well known from plays like “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You,” “Beyond Therapy” and “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.”

Or maybe Durang isn’t so well known. In video clips that connect these sketches, people on the street are asked if they know who Durang is--along with several other contemporary playwrights. No one is familiar with Durang or, indeed, with most of the others. This running gag runs out of steam fairly quickly. In fact, most of these video fillers are self-indulgent and lame.

The sketches might also be a bit self-indulgent, but they’re not lame. The laughs start early and maintain a mostly steady rhythm until the end of the evening. Director David Chambers, who picked the pieces, found five gifted actors to play all the parts.

Generally, Durang examines the same subjects here as in his longer plays--not surprising, for none of these sketches is brand-new. All but one have been published, all but two have been previously produced. And the one (“The Gym Teacher”) that hasn’t been published or produced is, in fact, the oldest of the lot.

The first (and never previously produced) sketch, “John and Mary Doe,” is a portrait of a supposedly typical American family in which the platitudes are quickly, almost literally, hacked to pieces. The irony is crude, but the laughs are loud, and the piece certainly provides a candid warning of the darkness of Durang’s comedy--in striking contrast to Durang’s own placid visage, which we’ve already seen on a video clip. Garth Hemphill contributed expert sound effects.

Jodi Thelen does a bit as a wretched stand-up comic who brought her own laugh track to help her out, though occasionally the track has a mind of its own. Then everyone else in the cast does “Nina in the Morning,” starring Amanda Carlin in the title role as a vain, rich devotee of plastic surgery, casual incest, Louis Malle and general anesthesia.

In the monologue “The Gym Teacher,” Howard Shangraw addresses incoming seventh graders in a manner that will make them long for sixth grade. Wearing nothing but pale blue, plaid pants and, exposed over the back of the pants, a jockstrap, he oozes lubricity (to use a favorite word of Nina’s in the previous sketch). In another monologue, Hal Landon Jr. then takes the stage as “Cardinal O’Connor,” explaining it all for us on the topics of Communism and condoms.

The first act ends with “Naomi in the Living Room,” in which Thelen, outrageously decked out by costumer Todd Roehrman, plays the title terror as she socializes with her timid and recently bereaved son and daughter-in-law, who disagree on certain issues of fashion.

The first video segment after intermission has Durang making a pitch to subscribe to South Coast, followed by a brief rendition of “La Vie en Rose” using a somewhat askew translation.

Then Thelen plays a grieving widow in “Funeral Parlor,” while Shangraw plays the loopy mourner who insists that she keen for her departed, right then and there. This one was written for a Carol Burnett TV special and originally performed by Burnett and Robin Williams. It’s the most warm-hearted, least despairing piece of the evening.

Robert Patrick Benedict plays an altar boy who visits God (Landon) to ask about the rationale for AIDS in a somewhat rewritten excerpt from “Laughing Wild,” which Durang himself performed in 1990 at the Tiffany Theater. This God is so wacky and cruel that the altar boy concludes that perhaps he’s just an impostor.

The last and longest piece of the evening is a “Glass Menagerie” parody, “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls.” Limping Laura has become Lawrence (Benedict), who collects colored glass swizzle sticks, not animals. Amanda (Carlin) is still thrilled to hear that her son Tom (Shangraw) will bring home a colleague as a potential date for Lawrence, but the caller is now a woman, Ginny (Thelen), who has a lover named Betty. Ginny, incidentally, has no idea how deaf she is and tends to misunderstand everything poor little Lawrence says.

For those who have seen a lot of “Glass Menageries,” this is hilarious. Others might want to check out the original before seeing this “Mess.”

* “A Mess of Plays by Chris Durang,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends May 26. $26-$36. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

A South Coast Repertory production. By Christopher Durang. Directed by David Chambers. Set by Michael C. Smith. Costumes by Todd Roehrman. Lights by Tom Ruzika. Sound and video by Garth Hemphill; video sequences conceived by Durang and chambers. Production manager Michael Mora. Stage manager Randall K. Lum.