No Time’s Wise Guys Spoof Hip-Hop, Politics

When is a Beastie Boys parody not a Beastie Boys parody? When it’s comedy-rap trio No Time, now in a weekly residency at LunaPark, where its Thursday performance ran the gamut from hip-hop spoof to political satire to pop culture commentary to scatological free-for-all.

College chums Robert Cohen, MC Theripy (a.k.a. Chas Mastin) and Billy Portman did evoke the kings of white rap in such numbers as “(We Got the) Whole 3rd World (In Our Hands).” Yet the veteran sketch comedians, who have been doing No Time since 1997, also amused the small audience with some Monty Pythonesque silliness involving a tune from “Brigadoon” and a bit envisioning physicist Stephen Hawking as a comedian.

That was the good stuff, which showed the players had some interesting ideas, as well as talent and charm. But much of the material proved pointless and tired, not to mention unevenly paced, making for a sometimes excruciating 75-plus minutes.

A song that has been played on KROQ, “Eat All the Old People,” was nothing more creative than a Swiftian solution to the graying of America, while another number celebrating the members’ penises was simply too obvious. As adeptly as No Time mixed such far-flung references as Wile E. Coyote, E.F. Hutton and Willy Wonka, it ultimately revealed only the whims of three educated wise guys.

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* No Time performs Thursdays in April and May at LunaPark, 665 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, 9:45 p.m. $7. (310) 652-0611.