‘Community’ Could Use More Planning

Sometimes even the most well-oiled engines stall. The Groundlings, the formidable machine that has dominated local improv comedy for the better part of a generation, experiences technical difficulties in “Groundlings: A Planned Community,” the main-stage directing debut for longtime company member Tony Sepulveda, who previously helmed the group’s regular Sunday show.

From the standpoint of pure performance, the group displays plenty of physical verve, and comic timing to spare. However, there’s a paucity of intelligent comic material in this hit-or-miss evening, which frequently descends into silliness and cliche, without offering the distinctive breakout characters typical of the troupe’s past efforts.

Too often, a sketch centers on a gross sex joke or a funny hairdo, with little else to recommend it. Sepulveda and company don’t know when to call it quits, in their improvs or in their scripted segments. Jeremy Rowley scores big laughs as a bizarre applicant who stuns the admissions panel of a prestigious film school with a blizzard of outrageous lies, but his later turn as a similarly bizarre banking customer seems blatantly repetitive. In an opening improv sequence, the performers must begin their lines with alternating letters of the alphabet, an unwieldy exercise that yields few laughs.

Sometimes, the silliness works, as in a sketch featuring funny Karen Maruyama as a cannibalistic murder defendant, and another in which Rowley and Will Forte chomp the scenery in a grandly florid argument over a library book. And, in her hilarious “One Woman Show,” Cheryl Hines portrays a surreally untalented solo performer at her self-indulgent worst--a laugh riot for anyone who has ever suffered through the real thing.

*

* “Groundlings: A Planned Community,” Groundling Theatre, 7307 Melrose Ave. Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 8 and 10 p.m. Runs indefinitely. $17.50. (323) 934-9700. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.