THEATER REVIEWS : ‘Planet’ Offers More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys

Ah, late-night puerile humor. It hauls in millions of tube viewers and there’s no reason why it can’t work with a theater crowd too. But that’s only if the group onstage is as sharp as the Monkey Planet Project. Its “Beneath the Monkey Planet” is the third entry in the Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble’s new late-show series, and it marks this promising sextet as a cut above the great unlaughed.

The Monkey Planet Project’s metier is an American version of British sketch comedy. Part satire and part abject silliness, the fast-paced show careens through skits and bits that skewer mainstream baby boomer culture: TV, Elvis, the vapid actress syndrome, homelessness and more. It isn’t that the material is so exemplary, but that the group’s timing is right on. The execution is amusingly manic but never out of control.

Under Julia Fletcher’s athletic direction, John DeMita, Robert Kempf, Eleanor Lind, Andy Philpot, K.T. Vogt and Dane Christopher first appear as a group of dimwits trying to find their way out of a maze of tunnels. It’s a B-movie set-up, reprised twice during the course of the show, that both delights in and excuses excess. The performers milk it for what it’s worth, if not more.

“Beneath the Monkey Planet” keeps coming at you fast and furious, so you don’t get much chance to dwell on the duds, such as Lind and Vogt’s monologues about not being able to write (Lind) and living out of a car (Vogt). These interludes seem to have been spliced in mostly to mask costume changes. Bloopers aside though, “Beneath the Monkey Planet” is a fun post-prime (primate?) time place to hang.

* “Beneath the Monkey Planet,” Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble, 8780 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles. Fridays-Saturdays, 11 p.m. Ends Nov. 20. $7.50. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 55 minutes.

‘Weird Sex’ Leaves Out the Love Story

Two twentysomethings meet in a hotel, make the beast and split. That, plus a lot of wee hours drinking and cig smoking is about all that happens in South African Chris Pretorius’ “Weird Sex in Maputo (A Love Story)” at the Court. But the stasis is exactly the existential point.

Pretorius has put his finger on something about Generation X anomie all right, and the vague yearnings expressed by his two white hetero protagonists ring true. Unfortunately though, the drama’s minimalist style doesn’t convey as much as it should. Sometimes a silence is just a silence.

Set in a run-down room in the capital of Mozambique, this last tango in Maputo intentionally leaves much unsaid. The nameless characters aren’t effusive about themselves or their pasts, and their interactions are cryptic and oblique--up to and including a relatively well-choreographed sex sequence.

Yet since the characters tell us so little about who they are and where they’ve come from, we’re hard pressed to have any more emotional stake in the goings on than they do. That leaves South African-born actors Susan Dall and Andre Odendaal to invest the piece with the little texture it has. This they do with knack, especially the deceptively natural Odendaal. But a bit more detail in Pretorius’ text would go a long way toward making this more than a mere pas de deux of the put-upon.

* “Weird Sex in Maputo (A Love Story),” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood . Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 5. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

‘High Hopes’ Can’t Escape Time Warp

Whoa, Nellie. Hold on to your control tops, girlfriends. This one’s a bumpy ride back in time.

Libba Bray’s 1990 “High Hopes and Heavy Sweatshirts” at Theatre Geo is a string of monologues that seems as if it’s straight out of the ‘70s. But feminist theater has come a long since then, baby, and the whiny-women-on-parade routine doesn’t cut it anymore--no matter how much acting and directing talent there may be in Geo Hartley’s staging.

Meet Betty Jo (Debra Key Carroll). She lives in the shadow of her popular big sis, yearning only for larger breasts and to have Daddy tell her she’s a “pretty little thing.” Betty Jo’s buddy Chrissy (Juliette Jeffers) has been a loose woman ever since her jerk of a first love deflowered her and pronounced her a slut. Betty Jo’s stuck-up sister Veronica (Kathryn Sparks) is “embarrassed of” her family. And Betty Jo’s Bible-thumping Ma (Sunny Reale) snivels that she never got the chances that these young women have.

Consuela the catty hairdresser (Teresa Di Spina) subjects a theatergoer to a needless bit of audience abuse while sniping at Veronica and others. Vera the bitter lounge singer (Jana Robbins) and Betty Jo’s baby sis Sara Ann (Shira Berenson) pule and gripe too. But even though Hartley makes these actresses look their best, the victims’ litany is pointlessly retro.

I am woman, hear me snore.

* “High Hopes and Heavy Sweatshirts,” Theatre Geo, 1229 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood . Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 14. $10. (213) 462-3348. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

‘Friends’ Pays Visit to Cast of Stereotypes

T’Keyah Crystal Keymah (“In Living Color”) is a charismatic actress, but her multi-character solo “Some of My Best Friends” at the Fountainhead is stuffed with generic characters and tired truisms.

Written mostly by Keymah, with contributions from writers Angela Jackson, Harry J. Lennix and Ali LeRoi, “Some of My Best Friends” is a familiar visit with a cast of stereotypes. Whether it’s aspiring actress Monique, baby-toting teens Cryssy and Shauntifa, self-righteous poet Eartha, buppie Lillian Black-White or any of the rest of the eight personas who appear and reappear in Keymah’s gallery, they all seem to be folks we’ve met before. And the chameleonic and effervescent Keymah sticks herself with some of the most hackneyed lines this side of bad sitcoms.

Condensing the material and cutting the intermission would help. But not as much as it would if Keymah left the writing to others.

* “Some of My Best Friends,” Fountainhead Theatre, 1110 N. Hudson, Hollywood . Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 & 7:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 12. $15. (213) 962-8185. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

‘Marat / Sade’ Needs Mature Company

Peter Weiss’ mid-’60s drama “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade,” a.k.a. “Marat/Sade,” is tough enough to stage for those who understand the complex dramaturgy involved. But it’s best not attempted at all by such groups as the young and amateurish Actors Playground team at 2nd Stage.

The elaborate production is ambitious, if not much else. A chunk of change, for example, must have gone into Aaron Osborne’s fake brick set, although the result is way too Disney. Still, the greatest problem is that instead of Artaudian violence and Brechtian irony in a drama with songs about mental patients putting on a show about the French revolution, director Juan A Mas gives us a low-rent “Les Miz” with twitchy Mouseketeers in pancake makeup.

* “Marat/Sade,” 2nd Stage Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood . Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 21. $10. (310) 305-8061. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.