On the laugh track

Every Wednesday night Patrick Keane drags three plastic Pepsi pallets across the sloping concrete floor of the Bitter Redhead in Santa Monica.

As he arranges them into a makeshift stage between a large-screen TV and an electronic dart game, his eyes scan the bar -- a table of drunks who won’t stop yelling, a man carrying on a conversation with no one in particular and, to his right, another missed shot in the world’s longest game of eight ball.

Keane grabs a cheap wireless microphone, only to fill the room with crunching feedback. Then it shorts out; deadly silence.

Though this sounds like one of those performance-anxiety dreams show business people talk about, this is real. It’s Comedy Night at the Bitter Redhead on Lincoln Boulevard. Keane, its creator and host, is just trying to start another show.

Since the show’s inception in November, this unlikely venue for comedy has carved a distinctive niche in the local comedy scene.

“It’s very hard to get a real audience in Los Angeles,” Keane says. “Outside of the Improv, the Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory, it’s just open mikes, where your audience is just other comedians.”

This is not an open mike; it’s an organized show. And when comics work before the Redhead audience, they get experience they won’t get at bigger, more famous rooms that charge a hefty cover, plus a two-drink minimum, and have a fancy red light to signal comics when to wrap up their acts. (Keane shines a flashlight at them from behind the bar.)

Hecklers, for example, always are a problem. But even if someone’s just talking, everyone in the bar can hear it and it simply can’t be ignored. As Keane puts it: “Here, you either learn to work it into your act or die.”

And it doesn’t end on stage, because unlike the big rooms in town, there’s no smooth exit. The comics simply step off the stage and are back among the audience, where frequently they’ll end up shaking hands with the person who was just yelling at them.

As if the audience weren’t enough of a challenge for comics, there’s always the reality of the room itself to contend with. “Because of its smallness, words don’t just dispel into the air like in a lot of clubs,” Keane says. “Last week we had a softball team that just wouldn’t shut up. You’re never going to get that in a comedy club.”

This night’s opening comic is Rob Baxter, who after several shows here, agrees. The floor slants and it may be ill-lighted, but, he says, “this place prepares you.”

“At actual clubs people come because it’s a comedy club first and then a bar,” he says. “But at the Bitter Redhead, they come for the bar first; the comedy just happens to be here. And sometimes it gets in the way of their drinking.”

Baxter uses the Redhead to work out new material before taking it on to the bigger clubs. “It’s definitely low pressure,” he says. “You don’t have the industry crowd in the back fishing for talent.”

That builds in a certain freedom for comics to veer from their standing routines when necessary. Baxter, for example, doesn’t swear in his act in an effort to appear TV friendly to that same industry crowd. But on this night, his act took a U-turn when he used the mother of all swear words, because, as he said later, “the crowd just really deserved it.”

And in this environment, the laughs aren’t always from the comics. During one woman’s set, a man walked in off the street and up onstage. She stopped and looked at him, at his name sewn onto his overalls, then asked midjoke: “Can I help you, Juan?” Juan said something to her and walked out. She then announced that Juan was about to tow a brown Honda parked in front of the bar.

It’s about halfway through the night’s show, and a young Japanese woman is talking about how her unusual height elicits Godzilla comments whenever she travels back home. Suddenly she stops and stares at the audience. “I usually black out here,” she says. “Talk among yourselves for a minute.” Then someone yells out, “Cameras.” Oh, right, she says, and goes on with her act.

As odd as this moment seems, it’s actually the room’s main appeal. Because no one seems to care, it gives comics a place to blow their jokes in front of a crowd without hurting their egos or their careers.

Which, according to Improv owner Bud Freidman, only helps his clubs. “One-night clubs are good for comedy,” he says “They give comedians a place to train and work out their material before they come to the Improv.” They also may serve as a firewall of sorts. Because, Freidman adds, “There are lot of lousy comedians. But out of the hundreds out there, there are going to be a percentage of good, very good and great ones.” These are the ones who eventually will make the jump from comedy nights to comedy clubs.

As well as the Redhead’s comedy experiment seems to be going now, in the beginning there definitely were some doubts.

“I thought there’d be like 30 or 40 people the first week,” said the bar’s co-owner, Craig O’Neill. “Then it would just slowly filter away.” But that hasn’t happened. “Business has anywhere from doubled to tripled,” he says. “A lot of people find this place because of the comedy, then they come back on other nights.”

People such as Damian Fraticelli, one of the typical mix of twenty- and thirtysomething regulars who come for the relaxed atmosphere. “In traditional clubs you’re forced to sit and take the comedy,” he says from his stool at the bar, “good or horrible. But at the Redhead, if a particular comic’s bad, you can just belly up and order another beer.”

Just after midnight, the headliner admits he’s tired, bored and out of material and decides this is a good place to stop. He walks off the stage and the show is over.

“I’d like to have this room for a while,” Keane says as he drags the pallets back to the storage closet. “Doing this keeps you honest.”

*

Bitter Redhead

Where: 2101 Lincoln Blvd.,

Santa Monica.

When: Comedy Night, Wednesdays 10 p.m.- 12:30 a.m.

Cost: No cover.

Info: (310) 450-6776