Wit Doctors in Training

SANTA ANA —  Apparently not content with status quo, the Orange County Crazies no longer are a single comedy ensemble but a project with multiple aspects. Many of them, on paper at least, echo the Groundlings, Crazies founder-director Cherie Kerr’s alma mater. Recently there have been Crazies offshoots (the gifted duo of LizAnne and Nina Arnelli), Crazies-sponsored plays (Drake Doremus’ “Lock Out”) and now the Crazies-in-Training, modeled on the Groundlings’ Sunday night shows that foster new skit and improv talent for the main company.

In their first show, “Orangeplugged,” the Crazies-in-Training indicate they are up to the task. Sure, there are the inevitable fits and starts along the way. But, at least on the night this reviewer attended, the eight-member group generally held its own, overcoming some serious obstacles in its path.

What was curious was that none of those obstacles needed to have existed.

There was, for instance, a problem with tone--not the cast’s fault, but Kerr’s. Emceeing the evening and leading her group through improv scenes while gathering suggestions from the audience for themes, topics and items (“Orangeplugged” is more than 90% improv), Kerr ran the show with a too-heavy hand.

Was she uncertain whether the new group could handle live audience pressure? Unsure what the audience was thinking? In any case, after nearly every scene, she commented on how difficult improvisational comedy can be (we know, we know). She also kept reminding the audience and cast to “keep things PG”--even though this was an all-adult audience that surely could have tolerated a little R material.

When the performers played TV talk-show guests (they were supposed to be authors of quickie books on the Heaven’s Gate cult story), the rules of the improv (a) made no sense, and (b) kept getting in the players’ way. No talk show has authors reading from their books ad nauseum (indeed, they’re supposed to talk). Yet that was the rule imposed here, with Kerr continually reminding two of the performers, Elizabeth Hayes and Alan C. Hobbs, to keep looking down at their books. It was as though they were errant schoolkids being sent to the corner.

Still, Ken Browning, as the addled author of a children’s book describing Big Bird’s visit to Heaven’s Gate, managed with inspired lunacy to pull the skit out of the skids. Hayes and Heather Sonnenberg revealed consistent comic instincts and the wits to stay in character--always a trick with improv. And Mike Stuart looks like a comic powder keg in the making, in the Chris Farley-John Belushi mold.

BE THERE

“Orangeplugged,” Orange County Crazies Theatre, 115 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana. Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 26. $10. (714) 550-9900. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.