‘Sideshow’ One of a Kind in Tinseltown

There’s a bit of the carny and a bit of L.A. performance talent in “Sideshow” at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center. If the mix does not always work, the show has one ace up its sleeve: There’s nothing else like it in town.

Subtitled “A Variety Show for Outsiders and Miscreants,” director Beth Burns’ assembly sounds scarier than it really is. The Ringmaster, with Charles Burbridge overplaying an already tongue-in-cheek persona, lasciviously introduces each of three acts as if we are about to witness a carny’s version of the freaks from hell. He pulls aside designer Ron Gress’ giant, carny-inspired curtain (imagine that: a curtain in a small theater) to reveal . . . well, hardly freaks and certainly nothing hellish.

First up is a series of brief dance pieces, the program rotating on a weekly basis, by the companies Psycho Dance Sho, Subliminal Movements and Hysterica Dance Co. On Saturday, Ryan Heffington launched things with his silly drag piece “Dirty Diana.”

It was followed by a more thoughtful solo by Bubba Carr, “Improvisations,” which segued into two works, both titled “Solo.” The first was by the overly gymnastic Shari Nyce, the second by the unsteady Sara Storrie. They were choreographed by Kitty McNamee.

With Lisa Eaton, Heffington returned for McNamee’s duet finale, “Fireworks,” displaying the segment’s most interesting use of sound, which involved little music and more echoes of a revolutionary crowd.

The main act belongs to writer-performer Laurel Schneider, whose solo work “Ladies & Boys” recounts Schneider’s 1998 visit to Bangkok and her encounters with the city’s many “lady-boys”--young men who dress up as women in strip joints, and others who may or may not be hermaphrodites. Something in Schneider’s dry, matter-of-fact delivery and her deliberately bland descriptive abilities completely drains this tale of any taint of the tourist from the West getting cheap thrills from the East’s “exotic” lifestyle.

Schneider is less amazed and more nonplused by witnessing and coolly reading off a strip club’s menu of offerings, including various acrobatic acts performed by women with their not-so-private parts, but she is interested in one “lady-boy” who calls himself Two-in-One and who finally compels Schneider to reconsider what it means to be a woman. This is a completely theatrical work, but since the wry, sometimes ironic writing is easily couched in the school of Sandra Tsing Loh and David Sedaris, it’s also easy to imagine the radio version on National Public Radio’s “This American Life.”

In a fine change of pace, the capper of “Sideshow” is served up by Natural Phenomenon Ocean, the guitar and voice duo of Eddy Chavey and “Italian” Pete Punito. Though they sound like a progressive-rock revivalist effort but dub themselves “post-punk,” neither label could be further from the reality. Chavey strums a spunky, syncopated acoustic six-string guitar and joins Punito on a series of originals and cover tunes.

They tend in a more modest way to do to Irving Berlin what Thelonious Monk did to swing. The lyrics seem to have emerged from the heads of guys who have spent long hours at the poker table swigging whiskey. And the covers are even more mind-altering: Britney Spears’ “Oops! ... I Did It Again” redone as if by Damon Runyon, or the angry white guys’ version of “Over the Rainbow.”

Like the whole show, this pair cannot be bottled and reproduced.

BE THERE

“Sideshow,” Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 3. $10. (323) 661-1739. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.