‘Fully Loaded’ and ready for laughs

An intimate joy ride around town centers “Fully Loaded,” which ends its Upright Citizens Brigade run tonight and reopens at the Fake Gallery next month. Writer-performers Paula Killen and Lisa Orkin steer their unpredictable hybrid vehicle through hilarious terrain that gives these redoubtable single moms a hip, post-feminist edge.

Director Shira Piven puts Killen and Orkin in chairs and turns them loose, conversing against an eclectic sampling of female singers -- the “Mama Mix.” Unfettered earth mother Killen takes the driver’s seat, musing on the barfly with whom she just made out. Orkin, a deadpan blend of Anne Hathaway and Elaine May, rides shotgun and supplies zingers, such as “Jewesses don’t have to be funny.”

When Orkin confides that she has “totally lost faith in my breasts,” a suddenly sober Killen halts the show and “Fully Loaded” enters areas that Pirandello would appreciate. “My Cancer Moment, by Lisa Orkin” follows. Then, it’s back on the road, where anything can come up and likely will.

The sense that there is nothing that Killen and Orkin won’t take on drives “Fully Loaded.” They discuss kids, drugs, sex, exes, Dolly Parton’s cover of “Stairway to Heaven.” Killen mimics a cocksure dude to help Orkin sharpen her breakup technique. Then they haul a male audience member onstage for a “How to Break Up at Starbucks” demo. The final Q&A; session is a recipe for off-the-cuff mayhem. Guess what transpires.

Although “Fully Loaded” isn’t earthshaking, it’s certainly original and very funny. Killen and Orkin are going places.

*

-- David C. Nichols

“Fully Loaded,” Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave. Hollywood. 8 p.m. today. Adult audiences. $8. (323) 908-8702. The Fake Gallery, 4319 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, 8 p.m. Fridays, Sept. 29, Oct. 27, Nov. 24. (323) 661-0786. Running time: 55 minutes.

Not a sum of its elaborate parts

Billed as a hybrid of one-act plays and improvisational devices, “FOODSEXWORKSLEEPGOD” is writer-director Ron West’s kaleidoscopic tour of the basic threads that make up the comic tapestry of urban life.

By skillfully interweaving recurring characters and stories, West turns individual skits about fast-food workers, dating, celebrity worship, military service and prayer groups into a sprawling but integrated narrative of sorts -- apparently in hope that the whole will transcend the sketchy limitations of its parts.

The connecting links are often tenuous, even goofy -- after an airport altercation with Brad Pitt, a lonely nobody goes on a date with Jennifer Aniston to a school brass band’s off-key performance of the “2001” theme.

Some transitions are baroque in their intricacy -- in a series of dreams-within-dreams, a creative writing student facing an unexpected final exam wakes to find himself in the classic actor’s nightmare about to go onstage in a play he’s never rehearsed, only to awaken as a general trying to prevent a “Dr. Strangelove”-style Armageddon. The most elaborate sequence involves a Halloween costume scenario in which various cast members cycle through one another’s disguised characters.

In its premier outing, West’s material benefits from versatile Jamila Alina, Amelia Borella, Challen Cates, Chad Fifer, Bruce Green, Hepburn Jamieson, Aaron McPherson and Andrew Schlessinger, who acquit themselves capably in multiple roles. Blocking and scenic design make only adequate use of the Open Fist Theatre’s new venue at the former Actors’ Gang space (yet another of the unfortunate musical chairs-displacements afflicting so many local theater companies caught in the real estate roller coaster).

For all the ingenuity and hard work expended on this elaborately constructed jigsaw puzzle, however, none of the individual pieces offer sufficient wit or insight to make the completed picture worth the effort.

Philip Brandes

*

“FOODSEXWORKSLEEPGOD,” Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 16. $20 (Sundays pay-what-you-can). (323) 882-6912 or www.openfist.org. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

‘Dames at Sea’? Bring life jackets

It’s a cardinal rule of parody that you need to be at least as talented and accomplished as your target; otherwise, the effort comes across as nothing more than sour grapes. When the target is itself a smart parody like “Dames at Sea,” the risk of falling short by comparison is even greater -- which is exactly the kind of overreach that torpedoes the Knightsbridge Theatre’s leering, gender-bent “make-over.”

A seven-performer faux-Busby Berkeley-era musical that launched the career of Bernadette Peters when it debuted in 1968, “Dames” was originally conceived by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller (book) and Jim Wise (music) as an affectionate, knowing salute to the genre’s inconsequential charms. Its paper-thin plot about a chorus-line ingenue who steps in to save a Broadway show when the star gets sidelined paved the way for “42nd Steet” two decades later.

Here, however, Beau Puckett stages the piece as it might be performed by the decadent chorus of “Cabaret’s” Kit Kat Club, complete with an over-the-top drag queen version of imperious stage diva Mona Kent (R. Christofer Sands) and crotch-centric choreography by Andrew Makay.

Unfortunately, the production lacks the talent to succeed either as a capable “Dames” revival or a lewdly perverse parody of one. Amid the off-key warbling and out-of-sync dance numbers are glimmers of stage musical charisma courtesy of Jen Gabbert as a big-hearted chorus gal and Tim Polzin, dual cast as the scenery-chomping impresario and the uptight Navy captain whose ship gets commandeered for the show’s premiere after the theater gets bulldozed.

As Ruby, the ingenue with the kewpie doll curls, Kelly Bozcek is no Bernadette Peters -- reaching for the upper notes in her solo numbers proves a nerve-racking struggle for performer and audience alike. Even more painful are her attempts to fill the tap shoes of the character’s namesake, Ruby Keeler. In her big duet with Tanner Redman as the songwriting seaman, Dick (named after Keeler’s frequent dance partner, Dick Powell), the dissonant harmonies almost eclipse the kicker, when he puts her hand in his lap to end the song -- don’t wince or you’ll miss it.

-- Philip Brandes

“Dames at Sea,” Knightsbridge Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 1. $25. (323) 667-0955 or www.knightsbridgetheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.