Updated ‘Alice’ Shows No Signs of Aging

Cut out a reference to O.J. Simpson here, insert one to Dennis Rodman there, and “A . . . My Name is Alice,” hardly shows its age at all. The 1983 mixed-bag revue about women being women is still fresh and fun.

Long Beach’s International City Theatre makes its move to a larger space with this crowd-pleasing show, a sentimental, funny evening, consisting of songs and skits from 20-some different writers. Shashin Desai directs a cast of five, who briskly create a collection of adolescents, old people, French chanteuses, kindergarten teachers, MBAs, poets, and appreciative Chippendale patrons, mostly with a firm, light comic touch.

The funniest bit, by lyricist Mark Saltzman and composer Stephen Lawrence, shows what happens when you put a blues singer on the couch. Honeypot Watkins (the wonderful Wanda Houston) specializes in sexy double-entendres; she sings with blazing hunger about wanting some sweetmeat and her oven being hot.

“Now, tell me what you want without making any reference to food,” demands an antiseptic shrink (Lucy Daggett). Trying to express desire without metaphor, Honeypot is like a baseball player with a mouthful of tobacco forbidden to spit.

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The evening’s running gag targets bad poetry written by female masochists, and it, too, still works these many years later. Draped in a scarf, the hilariously woeful Linden Waddell recites, “I am woman/A crippled bird/The ledge is cold. . ./He did it.” After writing this, the authors, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, went on to the slightly more lucrative job of creating “Friends” for NBC.

The winning Caren Saiet painted a wistful mood with a light torch song called “I Sure Like the Boys,” which had music by Lucy Simon (who went on to write “The Secret Garden”) and lyrics by Steven Tesich (the playwright and screenwriter who died earlier this year). Program notes on the writers would have been interesting and helpful.

Bradley Kaye created the efficient and attractive set, a two-tiered bandstand accented with the accouterments of a home--a floating molding there, a disconnected window there. Despite some amplification problems on opening night (which eventually evened out), the three-piece onstage band played sprightly, and its apparently sincere enjoyment of the actresses was charming.

Linden Waddell handled the widest range of characters with aplomb. Alone among the cast, Regina Le Vert pushed it.

Examined in a revue format, meant to be up-to-the-moment, the status of women’s lives could be a perishable subject. The success of this revival doesn’t mean that things haven’t changed for women since 1983, it means that perishable things can last when they are well built and in solid hands.

* “A . . . My Name Is Alice” International City Theatre at Center Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. $21-$26. (310) 436-3661 or (213) 365-3500 or (714) 740-2000. Running time: 2 hours.