TV Entree

Comedian Craig Shoemaker has received plenty of praise from audiences and critics during his nearly 20-year performing career. He’s one of the top draws in comedy clubs across the nation, and last year he was voted best stand-up comedian at the American Comedy Awards.

But since “The Magic Hour” debuted on Fox television on June 8, Shoemaker has been feeling a lot like cannon fodder. Magic Johnson’s late-night talk show has been raked over the coals by television critics. And as the inexperienced host’s inexperienced sidekick, Shoemaker has had little luck in avoiding the press barbs.

“I’ve never received a bad review in my life. So it’s strange to all of a sudden be called ‘the great white dope’ by a writer,” said Shoemaker, 39, sounding a bit shellshocked as he spoke recently by phone from the Los Angeles set of “The Magic Hour.”

Shoemaker acknowledges that the show has been, at best, inconsistent. He says critics need to give the show time to grow, particularly since he and Johnson are basically learning their roles on the job.

Johnson was a superstar basketball player for the L.A. Lakers before his career was cut short in 1991 when he learned he was HIV positive and retired. Shoemaker is used to performing solo--and without interference--as a stand-up comedian.

The Philadelphia native used to claim that he would give up stand-up comedy in a second if he made major inroads into the high-profile world of television.

Until recently, Shoemaker could never fathom sitcom stars who said they yearned for their old comedy-club days.

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Yet after fewer than three weeks of “The Magic Hour,” Shoemaker understands that it’s the creative freedom that makes stand-up so attractive in comparison to network television.

“When I do my own stage act, it’s easy because there are no parameters,” said Shoemaker, who returns to those not-so-distant roots in shows Thursday through Sunday at the Irvine Improv. “But here they say, ‘This is how you should dress,’ and, ‘Our focus groups tell us that you should cross your legs.’ It’s that kind of stuff.”

Comedy-club performances also allow Shoemaker to cut loose with adult material not suited to television. “It’s a total liberation,” he said.

Consequently, Shoemaker refuses to give up those stand-up gigs, despite a weekday schedule that finds him at the studio weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since the talk show began, he’s performed weekend shows in such far-off locales as Puerto Rico and Boston. “I’m physically exhausted,” he said.

Still, restrictions of “The Magic Hour” haven’t diminished Shoemaker’s desire for his own sitcom. Yet despite much effort and his popularity on the comedy-club circuit, Shoemaker hasn’t received a single invitation to pitch his ideas to a television executive.

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It hasn’t helped that the comic is best known for his risque LoveMaster, a deep-voiced fantasy persona who wows women with his sexual prowess.

“I was a real geek growing up,” Shoemaker said. “I wanted [girls to know] that I was the real LoveMaster and not the football star she was going out with. Every guy identifies with that, and every woman wants to hear that. Women love confident guys. I’ve definitely found that to be true. [The LoveMaster] is not me in real life, and yet--with this guy--I get to live that life for the few seconds that I do it on stage.”

The LoveMaster is just one part, albeit the most recognizable, of Shoemaker’s stage act. He also does bits that reflect his battles to balance his conflicting masculine and feminine sides, the result of growning up without a father or brothers.

“I’m a real guy. I like all the typical guy things,” he said, describing himself as a rabid sports fan. “But I’m a total fem when it comes to a lot of other things. I mean, I can sing any tune from ‘Les Miserables,’ including the female parts.”

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Shoemaker couldn’t believe it when he learned that the baby he and his wife are expecting in August will be a boy.

“I would have bet a $100,000 that it was a girl,” he said. “I almost fainted when I heard it was a boy. It’s such a female-dominated world I’ve been in.”

Not surprisingly, approaching fatherhood and late-night television have provided plenty of material for his stand-up act.

But the autobiographical nature of his performances have not done much for his relationship with his mother, who resents having her life exposed to strangers across America, he said.

“She works at a law firm, and people come up to her and say, ‘Did you really belly dance at Craig’s high-school graduation party?’ Stuff like that is difficult for her,” he said. “She doesn’t like it.

“I got flowers from everybody [after the debut of ‘The Magic Hour’], but I didn’t even get a phone call from her. Instead, she called my sister to tell her about one of the horrible reviews of the show. It was the one that called me ‘the great white dope.’ ”

* Craig Shoemaker opens Thursday at the Irvine Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Suite 138. 8:30 p.m. $12. Through Sunday. (714) 854-5455.