Behind the Scenes With a Rockette

Any actor worth his or her salt has a collection of tales from the theatrical trenches, war stories of professional disasters that can only happen in the theater.

Mostly, actors regale each other with these tales at social gatherings. But for those who don’t know a green room from a chartreuse parlor, “Out of Line,” Cate Cohen’s one-woman show at the Powerhouse Theatre, is a gilt-edged invitation to the cast party, an entree into an exotic world peopled by towering temperaments and larger-than-life personalities.

Cohen, who wrote the show with director Gibson Frazier, is a charming hostess, and those who love anecdote will delight in her candid reminiscences about her life in the theater. Granted, this buoyant entertainment is tethered by the thinnest of plots. Cohen, who spent three weeks in a psychiatric ward when she was a UCLA student, uses that youthful trauma as ballast for her lighter-than-air vehicle. The prevailing theme--that we’re all nuts rattling around an insane world--is insufficiently developed and hardly profound. However, it is sufficient excuse for the fun that Cohen amply provides.

Shortly after her release from the hospital, Cohen moved to New York City, where she dabbled in experimental theater and worked a “survival job” at a special events firm that provided entertainment for various functions. The various humiliations and mishaps she endured are richly recapitulated here. However, it is Cohen’s three-year tenure as a Radio City Music Hall Rockette that makes for the juiciest dish in this deliciously dishy evening.

Cohen’s grandfather was a pit musician at Radio City during the Depression, a pedigree that appealed to Radio City’s public relations department. Her newsworthy antecedents, combined with her leggy good looks and rigorous professional dance training, ensured Cohen a coveted place in the “line”--and all the grueling responsibilities and pressures that came with it.

With a keen attention to detail, Cohen takes us behind the scenes at the Radio City Music Hall, vividly re-creating the hothouse microcosm of a beloved American institution with great good humor and high-kicking panache.

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“Out of Line,” Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica. Thursdays only, 8 p.m. Ends June 6. $15. (323) 467-3428. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.