L.A. Deli

Review by Neal Weaver

Recommended

Photo by Ed Krieger

Set in a Hollywood delicatessen, this new comedy by Sam Bobrick (Norman Is That You?, Murder at the Howard Johnson’s) consists of 12 snarky but good-humored sketches about the movie business and its denizens. Six impressively versatile actors — Rachel Boller, Scott Kruse, Jeffrey Landman, Gail Matthius, Phil Proctor, and Darren Revitz— play some 28 characters: shyster agents, feckless writers, incompetent producers, shameless opportunists, ruthless studio heads, Hollywood wives, gold-diggers, elderly ingénues, wannabes and losers. All the sketches are funny, concise and sharply satiric, but they’re too lighthearted to draw blood.

Since all of them have surprise endings, one can’t say too much, but here’s a rough sampling: In “The Pitch,” the ambitious screenplay of a young writer (Kruse) is keelhauled by the conventional wisdom and stereotypic thinking of a producer (Proctor). In “The X S,” Boller and Revitz are oft-married, hair-tossing Hollywood wives who get together to compare notes on their husbands.  And  in “The Funeral,” the last rites for a Disney executive turn festive, with a three-minute round of applause (celebrating his death rather than his life) when the coffin is lowered into the ground.

Proctor plays seven roles, from an aging former child star to an abandoned husband still carrying a torch for the wife who left him. He’s engaging and effective in all of them. But all six actors shine, both individually and as a terrific ensemble. Director Walter Painter serves up a slick and stylish production, with a wonderfully detailed set by Jeffrey P. Eisenmann and costumes by Michael Mullen. And the incidental music, arranged and supervised by Larry Grossman, is rollicking and amusing in its own right. – Neal Weaver

The Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sat.-Sun, 3 p.m., through April 27. (323) 760-7738, www.plays411.com/ladeli.