Taking Life by Its Tales

When Sandra Tsing Loh was a temp at a Van Nuys insurance office, the women were required to wear pantyhose--even if they were wearing pants.

Alec Mapa’s temp travails included a stint at a Century City office where he shredded documents--and cried--all day. And this was after he starred in “M. Butterfly” at the Wilshire Theatre and on Broadway.

Loh and Mapa can swap temp-job horror stories with the best of them. Both are in their 30s, so they share a generational perspective. But that’s not to say that “Two at the Too,” a pair of monologues at the Taper, Too, is redundant.

In “Depth Becomes Her,” Loh narrates and enacts a series of short stories about L.A. life, taken from her book “Depth Takes a Holiday.” Mapa tells a more standard autobiographical tale in “I Remember Mapa,” set in San Francisco and New York as well as L.A., with moments that verge on stand-up comedy. Their differences keep the entire package interesting.

Directed by Chay Yew for the Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theatre Workshop, “Two at the Too” is an extremely accessible and entertaining evening with two seemingly natural-born wits.

As a Buzz columnist and a veteran of L.A.’s performance scene, Loh has slyly mocked ethnic-specific performance opportunities like the Asian Theatre Workshop in her essays, even confessing to having emphasized the Chinese half of her heritage in order to improve her grantsmanship prowess.

Still, she hasn’t changed her act for this Asian-specific presentation. In fact, there is less Chinese-specific material here than in her 1995 solo show, “Aliens in America.”

Besides temp jobs, Loh tells of fantasies of what her 20s should have been like, as well as stories of a pit bull in a swimming pool, odd trick-or-treaters, commitment-impaired dates, homeless people as “turnstiles” at intersections, deceptively ethnic-looking restaurants, a supposedly inspirational assembly at Venice High School, an adult screenwriting class in Hollywood, an assignment from Cosmopolitan to interview “L.A.’s party girls,” and her eccentric, hitchhiking Chinese father.

Lest anyone accuse her of glossing over L.A.’s serious problems, she relates an account of a robbery and assault, but she nonetheless concludes with a mostly upbeat view of life in never-boring L.A.

Her performance skills have improved. Her intensity, as she drives home some particularly rich irony, is more commanding than ever.

Mapa tells stories of being a short, gay, tap-dancing kid, a jealous understudy and bit player in “M. Butterfly” before he finally got to go on in the lead, a man who lost most of his earnings from “Butterfly,” a son heartbroken by his mother’s death, a California Pizza Kitchen waiter, a down-and-out TV junkie who finally came back to life when he was cast in Yew’s “A Language of Their Own.”

He falls back on a few stereotypes (“men are pigs,” gays are incompetent at schoolyard sports). But he successfully quips his way out of self-pity, and his ability to hold a stage is undeniable.

The design is fairly lavish, especially for Mapa’s act, in which a rack of costumes stands on one side but goes completely untouched.

* “Two at the Too,” Taper, Too, 2580 E. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends April 20. $15. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.