Comedy ‘C-Cup’ Doesn’t Measure Up

Doug Field’s comedy “C-Cup,” at the Dorie Theatre, is a 15-minute idea that goes on an hour too long.

Last year, his sweetly naughty “Down South” combined the twin concerns of a young, sexually starved wife and the Cuban missile crisis on a nauseatingly perfect pastel set. “C-Cup” takes on Texas big hair, big breasts and bimbos and misses each target by a mile.

Homemaker Jana (Julie Sanford) has lost a breast to cancer. Her Velveeta-craving daughter, Sarah Beth (Jennifer Manley), is soon to wed a man she met in a chat room for people with bipolar disorders. A buxom neighbor, the widowed Sally Ann (Alana Stewart), has been sleeping with Jana’s hubby, Sam (Don Paul).

Sally Ann has been hired to plan Sarah Beth’s wedding. Jana and Sally Ann slide from anger to client-advisor civility. This might be funny, if Field’s script weren’t shooting blanks.

Director Richard Hochberg can’t manage to get laughs out of these tired Texas characterizations. The acting is adequate, but no one can save this script. Sanford’s Jana, with her short reddish hair and constrained niceness, recalls Annette Bening’s rose-tending, adulterous wife in “American Beauty,” but nothing in “C-Cup” reaches that movie’s creativity or depth.

* “C-Cup,” Dorie Theatre, Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 7. $15. (323) 957-9009. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.