‘Deux’ Seeks Biting Edge but Only Scratches L.A.’s Surface

They enter serious; they make no introductions. Staring straight ahead, they ignore the audience sitting behind tables at LunaPark. They launch into their first routine, about a couple discussing their problems with, one presumes incorrectly, a marriage counselor.

They are Tom Crocker and Jackie Planeix, the husband-and-wife team known simply as Blue Palm. Crossovers from the world of dance, students of Maurice Bejart, they now offer sketch comedy with a sober, postmodern air. Like Nichols and May after an extensive European tour. What dancing they now do is filler, palate cleaners between skits. Visually arresting, the couple is clearly staking out interesting terrain, but it must be said that the material in “Folie a Deux,” their new show, is slight. All the rigor they bring to it cannot alter that fact.

He is tall and very clean-cut. She is petite and sports a short, spunky ponytail, her eyeliner running on in a Natalie Wood, ‘50s gamin way. They portray a string of couples, starting with the two who are seeking some kind of help because their lives are boring. Their kid greets them by saying, “I hate you”; not even telemarketers return their phone calls. “We’re writers,” they explain. But they have second jobs to make ends meet. “I’m a clown,” he says. “I sell soup,” she says.

Clearly, Blue Palm has a good eye for the lightly absurdist detail. But these details build up, more often than not, to a punch line more theoretically clever than actually funny or satisfying, as is the case in this first skit. Similarly, the two start out with clever ideas about their characters but don’t go on to inhabit those characters beneath the surface, despite their serious air.

Two shallow people meeting at a party exchange astringently funny banter (He: “Are you a dancer?” She: “No, but I’ve had lunch with Pina Bausch.” He: “Does she have a big appetite?”). But how do these two differ from dozens of shallow urban types we’ve seen? Another skit finds two people meeting who have been having torrid cybersex for several months. As you might expect, things are not as exciting for the pair in person.

In the most spirited skit, a former WWII soldier returns to a barn where his former French resistance girlfriend has been waiting for 50 years. They try to get up to speed on cultural references. She looks at his newspaper. “They’re building a subway in Los Angeles?” He fills her in as best he can--”Well, they are going to make this really big effort.”

There are other good jokes at L.A.’s expense, such as when the shallow party-goer muses, “I just feel that Los Angeles is the city that dealt art its fatal blow. And I respect that.” It’s great to see Blue Palm shoot for a surfacey new voice, reflective of their L.A.-Paris lives. But, in “Folie a Deux,” it seems they have only just begun to posture.

* “Folie a Deux,” LunaPark, 665 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, Saturdays, 8 p.m. $8. Ends Aug. 23. (310) 652-0611. Running time: 1 hour.