Acme’s Bravo Company Marches Out ‘Strong’ Skits

This may be Acme Comedy Theatre’s B-team, but there is nothing second-rate about “Bravo Company: Curiously Strong.” This fairly consistent collection of funny skits touches on a wide range of topics--from pretentious lords to the biblical Lord.

In the well-choreographed opening number, “The Audition,” by Javier Grajeda and Jim Newman, the whole company auditions for the part of the Greek chorus in “Oedipus Rex.” Fred Goss is a distraught husband attempting to get his “estrogen-crazed” wife (Kristen Trucksess) to the hospital when she insists on picking a name for their soon-to-be-born baby in their amusing “What’s in a Name?” Pete Cunningham and Christian Malmin play two lifeboat Lotharios fighting over the only female survivor (Cecily Adams) of a shipwreck in “Cruising.”

J. Keith van Straaten and Jim Newman take us to the place where lost socks and loves go in “The Lost World.” Members of the very back of the chorus (Leslie Dixon, Grajeda, Newman and Trucksess) gripe in Dixon’s viciously funny “Lord of the Dance.” When God asks Abraham (Chip Chinery) to sacrifice his son Isaac (Goss), Isaac isn’t too keen on the idea, according to Chinery’s “Abraham, Isaac and God.”

Newman’s mildly amusing musical “War Games” tells about the fierce rivalry between board game moguls--the Parker Brothers (Newman and Van Straaten) and Milton Bradley (Grajeda). Chinery’s “Semper Hi Fi” shows a band as run by the Army where “Few good men can keep 4 / 4 time.” Chinery also appears as the Magic Cop in several brief skits.

Other highlights include Cunningham’s witty and slightly abstract examination of men and industry in “Those Assembled Here,” and Grajeda, Dixon and Van Straaten’s “2027,” in which parents lecture their son via hologram.

Director M.D. Sweeney sets a good pace; the arrangement of these 19 sketches has a nice flow.

* “Bravo Company: Curiously Strong,” Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Ave. Fridays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 5. $12. (213) 525-0202. Running time: 2 hours.