Comedy Duo’s Performance Eclipses Material at LunaPark

The awkward title “Little Sissy Man and His Amazing Wunder Woman’s Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s the Christmas Show!” is the most distinctive feature of the sketch comedy show written and performed by Paul Saucido and Yelyna De Leon, Tuesdays at LunaPark.

Leaving aside the offbeat moniker, the performance has “showcase” written all over it--not least because most of the sketches are presented as pieces that the two are performing for an acting teacher and director (Richard Azurdia), who is heard but not seen.

In between sketches, this invisible authority figure talks about trying to get the duo roles on TV comedy shows, but he also drips with condescension toward them and toward Latinos in general. As such, he helps them make a point about Hollywood’s prejudices. However, this is a vein that other Latino comedy groups have extensively mined, so it doesn’t seem particularly fresh here. Besides, this guy is such a cardboard villain that he’s entirely too easy to dismiss.

In the sketches themselves, the pair’s performances are better than their writing. Saucido is tall, wide-eyed and winsomely handsome, while De Leon is short and stout and unafraid to use her looks for comic effect, even in such lame material as “Mexi-Fatso Ballerina.”

The writing isn’t a complete loss. Best is a sketch that starts as a slapstick depiction of a Mexican woman who’s anxious to give birth north of the border; it ends on a seasonally appropriate note. The title characters--children who see themselves as Sissy Man and Wunder Woman--appear only briefly, near the beginning, and never amount to much, comedically.

* “Little Sissy Man and His Amazing Wunder Woman’s Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s the Christmas Show!,” LunaPark, 665 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood. Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 15. (323) 463-1818. $8. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.