‘Slippery People’ Cheeky but Flawed

“Slippery People” at the Open Fist Theatre has its origins in “performance art comedy.” This unusual hybrid blossoms under the rigorous staging of writer-director Charley McQuary. Still, this cheeky but flawed effort lapses too frequently into self-consciousness. Pithy aphorisms abound--but so do the platitudes that blight the evening’s levity.

McQuary incorporates stringently choreographed movement throughout the constantly shifting action. The actors navigate the stage like herky-jerky automata, twitching to the infectious rock rhythms of McQuary’s blaring sound design.

Red (Bonnie Leigh), Black (William Salyers), Yellow (Kirsten Vangsness) and Blue (McQuary, substituting for regular cast member David Castellani at the reviewed performance) are the ever-mutating characters of the piece. The game performers fluidly portray a diverse range of personae, ranging from the comic to the cryptic.

The play is best when it is most purely funny, as in an imaginative scene about a “lowest common denomitron”--a sort of futuristic machine that reduces all artistic effort to popular pap. However, a rapid-fire sequence alternating lines beginning with “I have the answer” seems little more than a workshop exercise, a somewhat pointless dramatic word game. Still, if you like your comedy high-brow and nonlinear, this may be your ticket.

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* “Slippery People,” Open Fist Theatre, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 21. $15. (323) 882-6912. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.