Where the mundane is made wacky

“Groundlings Mystery Train,” the latest main stage offering from the Groundlings comedy company, carries an intact cargo of laughter over a few weak trestles. Groundling veteran Deanna Oliver, who directs, keeps the action brisk and the timing precise, while the show’s various actor-writers demonstrate a delightedly skewed sensibility that transforms the most apparently mundane situations into the genuinely wacky.

A case in point is “Brokeback Office,” Mitch Silpa’s sendup of the film. In hilarious contrast to the pastoral archetypes of the original, Silpa plays a buttoned-down office functionary who simmers with suppressed longing for an oblivious co-worker. Jeremy Rowley’s “SBC,” which features Rowley as a pidgin-speaking phone company worker whose bizarre training methods flummox a new employee, is another office sketch that may be flagrantly politically incorrect but scores big laughs.

On a more exotic note, Mikey Day and Andrew Friedman’s “Taken” introduces us to a couple of backwoods boys who have a late-night encounter with a UFO. Friedman splits sides as the woebegone reject who is increasingly miffed to realize that the aliens don’t consider him a viable specimen.

However, the amply proportioned Melissa McCarthy scores the biggest laughs of the evening as Barb Kellner, a slack-jawed woman who is trying to drum up a bank loan for her pizza-eating business. Delightfully moronic, Barb is the kind of classic breakout character that could well become a household name.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Groundlings Mystery Train,” Groundlings Theatre, 7307 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays, 8 and 10 p.m. Saturdays. Indefinitely. $20. (323) 934-4747, Ext. 37. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

A betrothal of comedy styles

Seventeenth century Italy meets Lorne Michaels in “The Betrothed” at Theatre/Theater. If this Italian pastiche by Jon M. Berry is not quite the berries, it is often hilarious and generally agreeable.

Berry resets various classic archetypes -- two scheming fathers, their unhappily espoused children, clownish servants and secret amours -- with a postmodern viewpoint and hambone verbal style. Designer Bayeux Morgan’s solid Venetian setting and the strumming of composer-guitarist Bryon Hatcher drip Renaissance. However, the genial troupe of buffoons that romps along in commedia-meets-sitcom manner is closer to “Saturday Night Live” than to Carlo Gozzi.

Thus, money-mad Dottore Gratiano (Ingo Neuhaus) looks like Drew Carey and sounds like Johnny Carson. Jeff Murray plays his cohort Pantalone as a traditional buffo widower, by way of Carl Reiner. As their respective progeny, Branden Morgan’s weepy Oratio and Kate Woodruff’s daffy Flaminia upend standard juvenile/ingenue aspects.

Jed Mills as an ancient retainer with a cheesy Italian accent and Misi Lopez Lecube and Alan Gaskill as furiously swashbuckling Spanish siblings steal the evening, and their colleagues are certainly rambunctious.

Matt Skaja directs them fairly well, although the goofy wordplay and rubber-goose ruckus needs some tightening to keep collegiate coyness at bay. Not all of the slapstick matches the punctuation from sound-effects lackey Sam Rovin, and some passages need the actors to slow down and speak up. Yet by the time Nicolette Chaffey descends upon Act 2 as the braying, Cockney-toned plot pivot, most quibbles have long since dimmed in the face of such charmingly lowbrow enthusiasm.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Betrothed,” Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sunday. Ends April 16. $20. (818) 752-9253. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Lounge’ that’s

just a bit louche

The vaguely tacky pleasures of ‘60s and ‘70s Vegas inhabit “True Lounge” at the Masquers Cabaret. Chicago nightclub favorite Phil Johnson brings a remarkable voice and satirical poise to his cunning take on the post-Rat Pack trade.

Actually, “True Lounge” contains as much homage as sendup. An announcement from the management of “The Pan-American VIP Lounge” informs diners packed into the velour-laden venue that Johnson will be performing “for your preflight entertainment.” To a thunderous tremolo from expert pianist Ron Snyder, the dinner-jacketed, benign-looking Johnson sidles on. “Hello, young lovers!” Johnson crows. “There’s a lot of love in this room tonight!” As a faux-hip version of the theme from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” segues effortlessly into “Charade,” one must admit that Johnson has a point.

Johnson’s baritone, here silky, there soaring, recalls early-period Vic Damone. The high-wire phrasing and pianissimos merge nicely with Johnson’s sardonic finger snaps, mike gestures and tongue-in-cheek audience interaction. To see him turn “On the Street Where You Live” into a jazzy anthem while feeding a patron pizza is to enjoy a specialist in full command of his specialty.

The same is true of guest chanteuse Holiday Hadley, who makes an apt partner for Johnson mid-set. Her willowy, sultry appeal evokes Michelle Pfeiffer in “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” with rock-tinged chops that put over the duets and Hadley’s own original songs. “True Lounge” may be unassuming, but such droll humor and vocal gloss should have fans of the genre begging for more.

-- D.C.N.

“True Lounge,” Masquers Cabaret, 8334 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles. 7:30 Saturdays. Ends Saturday, then reopens April 8-29. $10 cover; $10 food/drink minimum. (323) 653-4848. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

A creative voice under all the ‘Pate’

In “Darwin’s Pate,” a world premiere comedy drama at the Pan Andreas Theater, playwright Elizabeth J. Musgrave dives into a stew of Southern Gothic archetypes, with occasionally smothering results. Musgrave apparently intends her piece as some sort of homage to various Southern writers, from Tennessee Williams to Beth Henley. But in recycling such distinctive styles, she doesn’t always avoid the trap of parody. There’s a genuine creative voice struggling to be heard above the distracting echoes of plays past, a raw talent that should not be easily dismissed. Yet in the final analysis, “Darwin” is simply too derivative for its own good.

Production designer Frank Forte’s excellent set is strewn with the filth and detritus of a family that has gone beyond the merely eccentric into the full-blown pathological. The action is set in Savannah, Ga., where Bonnie Mayo (Sarah Zoe Canner) and her incipiently senile mother, Dorothea (Caren LaRae Larkey), await a visit from Margaret (Jules Bruff), Bonnie’s estranged childhood friend, who is now engaged to John (Beau Baxter), an up-and-coming politician from a blue-blooded East Coast family.

A longtime agoraphobe, Bonnie relies on adoring redneck handyman Vernon (Ed Ellington) to act as her liaison with the outside world. Of course, inside the squalid and condemned Mayo house lurk family secrets galore. Twisted by a (sadly predictable) childhood trauma, Bonnie is out to make Margaret pay for daring to escape their claustrophobic milieu and succeed in the wider world.

Director Mark Landsman and an extremely talented cast keep the lid rattling on Musgrave’s highly watchable potboiler. The actors find the nuances in their obvious characters, particularly the delightfully devious, admirably poised Canner, who even triumphs over a troublesomely flowing gown that gets snagged on every piece of furniture in the place.

-- F.K.F.

“Darwin’s Pate,” Pan Andreas Theater, 5125 Melrose Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 26. $20. (323) 960-4410. www.plays411.com/darwins. Running time: 2 hours.