Acts With Humor, Whimsy Get Star Billing

Russian rock ‘n’ rollers, a one-woman washboard band, jazz and tap, master mimes and magical storytelling: “Funny-Bones,” eight weekends of shows featuring some of the best Los Angeles-based professional family entertainers, promises to be a summer treat for all ages.

The performance series begins Saturday at Garry Marshall’s Falcon Theatre in Burbank with “Breadcrumbs Along the Trail,” comic audience-participation storytelling performed by screen actor and We Tell Stories theater troupe founder Carl Weintraub.

Weintraub’s show runs Saturday, Sunday and July 29 and 30. Russian vaudevillian rock band Limpopo! performs on July 15 and 16, followed by Angela Lloyd’s show “The Butterfly Kleenex: Songs and Stories for the Young and Young at Heart” (July 22 and 23, Aug. 19 and 20), the Jazz-Tap Ensemble (Aug. 5 and 6) and the Chameleons in “Mime Over Matter” (Aug. 12 and 13, 26 and 27).

The eclectic roster of events was hand-picked by the Falcon’s executive producer, Meryl Friedman, who had definite criteria in mind as she previewed at least 40 groups and individual artists before making her selections.

“We had talked of it just being a collection of storytellers,” Friedman said, “but I wanted to venture out a little more, get storytellers who were more movement-based and who had some musical elements [and] do something more theatrical. So I went out looking for those that blended words, music and movement with a nice sense of humor and whimsy.”

*

Two easy choices, she said, were Weintraub, with his high-energy physicality and his gift for including the audience--”it’s not gratuitous; it’s really about using kids to help further the story”--and Lloyd, “a one-woman virtuosa on the washboard” with a wildly offbeat sense of humor.

“The first time I saw her,” Friedman said, “she told a story that made me laugh so hard, it was so off-the-wall, and she just went there, so funny and unabashed. And it was interesting to me to see how kids and adults responded to her on different levels, which I really like.”

That wide appeal and theatricality characterize Friedman’s other choices too: the exuberant Limpopo! troupe and its self-described “crazy Russian rock ‘n’ roll,” Jazz-Tap Ensemble’s multi-generational dancers and jazz trio and the husband-and-wife mime duo called the Chameleons.

“I usually have a kind of bias about mimes,” Friedman said. “It’s like, OK, it’s a mime; we’ve been there, done that.” But the Chameleons--Keith Berger and Sharon Diskin, who used their mime artistry to help Disney animators create characters in “The Lion King” and “Dinosaurs,” “are unique,” Friedman said.

“They are very, very good. They do things that you don’t often see. And I liked how we had some acts that were all about the words, and then we had this, which was just about the movement, yet it still told a story.”

Friedman’s overall philosophy about theatrical entertainment for young audiences is simple: “Good theater is good theater. I’m of the opinion that all successful ‘children’s theater’--in italics--should be successful for everybody.”

BE THERE

“Funny-Bones,” Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank; Saturday, Sunday, July 29 and 30: “Breadcrumbs Along the Trail.” July 15, 16: Limpopo! July 22, 23, Aug. 19, 20: “The Butterfly Kleenex.” Aug. 5, 6: the Jazz-Tap Ensemble. Aug. 12, 13, 26, 27: “Mime Over Matter.” Curtain: 1 p.m. $10 and $12. (818) 955-8101.