Sitcomish Tale Fails to Deliver the Laughs

The joke resurfaces every year as the new TV season gets underway: If you think the sitcoms that get on the air are bad, you should see the ones that don’t.

It seems like some of those that don’t make it to the tube show up in small theaters. Shelley Abrams’ wafer-thin comedy, “I’ve Got Your Number,” at NoHo Actors Studio, feels more like a TV sitcom reject than a real play, a bad hybrid that has plagued L.A. stages for years.

Word should have spread long ago that the stage is no place for a TV industry showcase. It doesn’t work for writers; it barely works for actors.

In this case, nothing works for anyone. Abrams imagines that a financially strained teacher named Penny (Ande Marks) on a lark would take a second job as a mob assassin. After changing her phone number, she gets countless wrong-number calls asking for “Rico.” Penny impulsively plays along, and finds herself committing to the Mafia, though she couldn’t hurt a fly.

The ensuing complications aren’t very complicated, this being a sitcom without cameras. Penny has to hide her secret life from her sister Fran (Gita Isak), her nosy and perpetually present mother, Mrs. Green (Abrams), and her new boyfriend, Paul (Dale Snowberger).

Things look suspicious, though, when Penny has library books on how to kill people painlessly--as if such library books exist--and she gets very nervous every time an undercover cop (Guy Forest) comes around.

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Of course, everybody comes around Penny’s. Her place is a traffic jam of people who come and go without knocking. It’s Jerry’s pad on “Seinfeld,” only with seven Kramers. For instance, Arthur, a nebbishy stockbroker (Bob Glouberman) confers with Penny about stock investments only at her place, never at his office. It’s always Paul coming to Penny’s. It’s always Fran coming to Penny’s. These people say they live elsewhere, but like a true sitcom home, Penny’s is their real abode.

This general sloppiness reaches its nadir with the Mafia subplot, involving a gunman named Louie (John Lizzi, alternating with Daniel Iorio). Abrams’ pat solutions to Penny’s thorny problems include mild-mannered Paul actually wrestling Louie to the ground. When we learn Paul’s real identity in the end, the wrestling match becomes even more ridiculous.

Because of Abrams’ aimless direction, poorly timed lines, and the sheer stupidity of the story, this is a comedy without laughs. It follows that, at least last Saturday, half of the audience departed at intermission.

The stilted and mechanical performances feel even more strained the harder the actors work to extract a laugh. This is also true of the bad sitcoms that get on TV, but at least when they get there, you can switch the channel.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “I’ve Got Your Number.”

* WHERE: NoHo Actors Studio, 5215 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 20.

* HOW MUCH: $12-$15.

* CALL: (818) 973-2254 or (310) 373-5691.