SKITTISH!--A Half-Dozen Unusual Comic Sketches

SKITTISH--the title is apt for this evening of a half-dozen comic sketches which make the audience giddy, hysterical, even a little queasy, by turn.

Most short comedies, especially evenings which collect a few, follow pretty conventional lines in their content and delivery, mere variants on the kind of sketch originated in improv, popularized by Second City, the Compass Players, The Committee, Saturday Night Live ... with maybe a dollop of topicality, or a little coceptual shading, to add some ballast to the silliness.

Skittish takes a somewhat different route. Bruce Moody, who's written for National Lampoon, the New Yorker and Look, and who's performed on stages in the Bay Area and elsewhere for years, has arranged this selection of his dialogues from a larger group to run a gamut of moods and dynamics, all generally humorous, in the space of 90 minutes.

Cultivating the art of simplicity, Moody grounds each short sketch in a simple formula: two actors, two chairs, a table and a door. The returns he and the ensemble get from this spare ground makes the laughter all the richer.

There's 'Instead of Which, or Mr. Shunderson's Story,' where one old friend confesses to another that he's led a secret life, and they both might be in danger--right now. And 'Snap Beans,' in which sisters Faith and Hope prepare the repast for their late sibling Charity's wake, talking about growing old--and the young. In 'Birthday,' a mother insists on treating her grown son as a kid--and then reveals a few things about being a kid and a parent. 'Cruisine' finds two tele-chefs shipboard, in a duel for the gamiest ingredients in the gourmet meals they're demonstrating, while the ship pitches in heavy seas. 'Loafing' marks an encounter between ingenue masseuse and cynical client which stretches the bounds of a massage table. And 'Random Act' takes another tack on the disparity between age and youth in the visit a gaffer pays to his old neighborhood.

The actors are well-cast for the two very different pieces they each play in, opposite different partners each time. Besides Moody, who weighs in as one chef, as well as either a witness-in-hiding or a grim joker, Joe Higgins provides genial comedic talent as a confused buddy and a sentimental curmudgeon. Kenna Hunt is both an outre Julia Childs and a mourner with a wry mouth. Candy Campbell is the other grieving--and quibbling--sister, and the unquiet subject of Ariana Hooper's far-out ministrations in massage and the spirit. Ms. Hooper also plays a loopy-seeming mother to Demetrius Martin's protesting but conciliatory son. And Martin is the younger foil to Higgin's curmudgeon. It all circles back on itself. Though the sketches aren't directly related, they're meant to fit together, as if randomly, and the actors make it happen.

The actors and master director Alfredo Fidani. Fidani--actor, mime, teacher and director--hails from Argentina, where he's highly regarded. There aren't too many opportunities to catch this quiet artist's work hereabouts, but he has a distinctive touch in staging, which peaks in the hysterical physical comedy, amid words, of the pas-de-deux of the ethereal masseuse with her earthy client on the narrow stage of a massage table, draped with a sheet.

Fidani's shown masterful handling of shows of works by Shakespeare, Beckett, Ionesco and Steinbeck. His style and humor comes across beautifully, as does the author's, in these very funny encounters between oddballs, portrayed with panache by six adroit professionals. It's a refreshing and enjoyable evening of theatricality in miniature.

(SKITTISH! plays Friday and Saturday nights at 8 through August 31 at Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, between Powell & Mason, off Union Square in San Francisco. Tickets are $15-20. reservations & info: 510-787-2706, or www.skittishcompany.com)