Bad Acting Worth a Good Laugh

Every Monday night for the past six weeks, a perky den mother-agent-acting coach in a beehive wig who calls herself Beverly Winwood greets visitors to the Groundling Theatre on Melrose and announces, just before the lights dim: “I’m going to let you in on a secret--these people are talented!”

The crowd hoots with laughter, even though the actors about to perform are in fact quite gifted: Jennifer Coolidge, fresh off a Broadway run in “The Women”; Cheryl Hines, co-starring as Larry David’s wife in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; Paul Reubens, who created Pee-wee Herman on the Groundlings stage in 1978; Lynne Marie Stewart, known to television viewers as Pee-wee’s sidekick Miss Yvonne on the 1986-90 show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”; and another dozen current or former members of the Groundlings improvisational troupe.

But as for the overzealous, under-experienced thespians portrayed by these actors ... to call them raw would be putting it kindly.

On any given Monday, “Beverly Winwood Presents the Actors Showcase” might start with a tender scene from “Children of a Lesser God,” which degenerates quickly into crude sexual pantomime at the hands of wooden Thad Ripple and dim-but-hardly-deaf Honey Thayer (played by Nat Faxton and Christen Nelson, respectively).

Cut to “A Streetcar Named Desire,” with the hyper-effeminate Stanley Fishwipe (Patrick Bristow) putting a queenly spin on the usually brutish Stanley Kowalski. Rapper-actor Danger (Jordan Black) and ex-convict Lewis Poole (Phil LaMarr) provide an unfathomably hostile interpretation of Biff and Happy in an excerpt from “Death of a Salesman.” In their chemistry-deficient selection from “Fame,” the chemistry-deficient team of Willard Carrington (Jim Rash) and Gemini Frank (Carrie Aizley) apparently believe they’re strutting their stuff in a flattering manner.

But does Carrington really believe agents and casting directors will be wowed by his wandering British accent and absurdly amateurish prop camera made of toilet paper rolls taped to a shoebox?

After the final blackout, the performers, still in character, network desperately in the lobby. Beverly (Susan Yeagley) hands out Twinkies, while Antelope Valley Theatre fixture Berle Dawson (actually MAD TV producer Michael Hitchcock), sweaty and still winded from a “Rent” dance routine, distributes fliers promoting his hand-puppet classes.

Huddling backstage, Eric Idle, Kevin Nealon and Liza Minnelli mingle ... oh wait, that’s actually Antoinette Spolar-Levine, whose “Liza” took part in an ensemble scene from “Sex and the City.” Levine/Minnelli’s “Sex” cast mate is Karen Maruyama, whose stolid Pu Ping Chow character seemed perpetually out of sync with her chatty girlfriends.

“The whole idea of show business is trying to get a job,” Maruyama says about the showcase experience. “You want to make a good impression, but you may put out this kind of horrible way you want to be perceived and it’s so not right. There’s something funny but sadly pathetic about that.”

Creating a good revue about bad acting is no easy task, according to “Showcase” creator-director Tony Sepulveda. “We did some scenes where people just talked in a monotone--it doesn’t work and you get bored really quick.”

Adds “Fishwipe” Bristow, “Forgetting your lines is so stock--what Tony’s done is made us play the bad choices of actors who don’t know themselves and who are putting themselves in what they think is a strong light.”

“The point of this show is not to make fun of actors per se, but of inappropriate choices,” Sepulveda says.

“When you go out of town and see talent shows, people just have no idea because there’s no real industry people there to guide them. I look at actors sometimes, and I’m amazed I have to say, ‘You’re 15 years old, don’t play a 30-year-old.’”

Sepulveda should know. A former Groundling, he now picks actors for “The West Wing” and “Will & Grace” as vice president of casting for Warner Bros. Television.

“This is a showcase about actors who don’t know any better, who have never done anything in their lives. It hasn’t registered yet that you really can’t sell yourself to the industry that way,” he says.

“What I’ve tried to make this cast do is commit to their characters, but their characters are so inappropriate--I think that’s what people are laughing at. The funny comes from the fact that the actors really believe 100% in who they are. We’re not writing jokes, we’re finding inappropriate readings.”

Adds Bristow “Any actor can identify with that, and say, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve been in a scene [like that] before I got better, not knowing what I was doing.’”

Sepulveda and company workshopped “Showcase” in August. Reubens saw a performance and was invited to take part. He and Stewart chose a scene from “Butterflies Are Free.”

“The moment I laid eyes on this script, I said, ‘We gotta do this: bad blind acting!’ This will be great.” Aside from the improbable casting--mature, zaftig Stewart plays an ingenue (originally played in the 1972 movie by Goldie Hawn) who discovers her hunky neighbor (Reubens) is blind--Reubens dug into his bag of bad acting tricks to come up with the scene’s running gag. “I mouth all my partner’s dialogue,” he says.

Sepulveda was on hand at rehearsals, continually lowering the bar. “He’d say, ‘That’s too subtle,’” Reubens recalls. “‘Make it bigger.’ Or, ‘That’s a good choice. Let’s find a weaker one.’”

“Beverly Winwood” began previews in February and immediately generated industry buzz. Jack Black, Cheri Oteri, Garry Shandling, Larry David, Jane Kaczmarek, Kevin Nealon and Eric Idle have come by to check out the shenanigans in recent weeks.

But will “Beverly” play to people who aren’t show people, or are the references too inside?

“Winwood” Producer Allison Kingsley, who served as the Groundling Theatre’s executive director for six years before parting amicably in 2000, said the source material is so familiar and the characters so vivid that a broad audience should have no trouble getting the joke.

“I’ve had friends come in from out of town who know nothing about the industry, nothing about acting, and they’ve just loved the show because it’s about character choices and it’s funny.”

Adding one more layer to the show’s fake/real dynamic is the fact that the actors playing the actors are hardly above the fray. Like any working professional, they want new gigs. Says Reubens, “I’m making this time commitment to the show, and you start thinking, maybe something would come out of it. And then I go, ‘What, are you nuts? No one’s going to cast me from this!’”

*

“BEVERLY WINWOOD PRESENTS THE ACTORS SHOWCASE,” Groundling Theatre, 7307 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Dates: Mondays at 8 p.m. Closes June 3. Price: $10. Phone: (323) 934-9700.

*

Hugh Hart is a regular contributor to Calendar.