‘Identity Crisis’ Has at Least Two Problems

The “dependently wealthy” 29-year-old twins would like to clarify something. They are not the Menendez Brothers. “We’re patient,” explain Todd and Taylor Leatherbury, “we’ll wait.”

Actually, that may be the funniest line in “Identity Crisis,” a one-hour show at the Theater at the Improv that is not a show at all, but rather a string of limp jokes about bad attitudes told by two twins on two couches to a single benign psychiatrist (Zale Kessler), who looks like the Monopoly man and sounds like Richard Dreyfuss.

Inexplicably directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, “Identity Crisis” has almost nothing going for it. There are no compelling characters--the boys are overgrown brats who make a routine out of empathy. Their tale has no growth, no drama and no story to speak of, though the evening begins with a promising slide show, following the twins from babyhood to manhood, doted on by an apparently adoring mom and dad. Dad is King Leatherbury, a top Maryland horse trainer, and the slide show suggests an interesting childhood for the twins, who hung out at various tracks and stables. We don’t hear about that. Todd and Taylor employ a callous tone to tell us the very little they do tell us--about Mom’s nervous breakdown and Dad’s bag of money stashed away upstairs that they regularly steal from.

One suspects the Comedy Twins, as they optimistically bill themselves, are not as dull as they seem, and that their flat, hard, joint personality is simply a comic persona gone wrong. That persona is put to such little use in “Identity Crisis” that they would be well advised to drop it, and try something else.

* “Identity Crisis: Our Journey Through Twindom,” Theater at the Improv, 8162 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, Wednesday at 8 p.m., Ends Sept. 24, $6. (213) 931-6108. Running time: 1 hour.