`ANGELS' A SLEEK, SASSY MASTERPIECE.

Byline: Daryl H. Miller Daily News Theater Critic

The ``City of Angels'' has been reduced to the size of about Barstow, yet it's as bustling and vibrant as ever.

We're talking about the musical here, not the city itself, of course.

The stylish homage to such film noirs as ``The Big Sleep'' and ``The Maltese Falcon'' returns not in a big, technical wonder of a production like the post-Broadway presentation at the Shubert in 1991, but in a compact, intimate production at the 99-seat Colony Studio Theatre in Silver Lake.

Cleverly compensating for the lack of stage space and pricey, computer-controlled sets, this ambitious company turns in a sleek, sassy, superb little show. The individual performances are strong, too - in most instances matching or even improving upon the Shubert version.

The story begins, noirishly enough, in a private investigator's office, with a bombshell hiring a hard-bitten detective to find her missing stepdaughter. As she exits and the detective begins to debrief his girl Friday, the sound of a typewriter is heard and the characters suddenly start speaking and moving backward. Then a writer is seen, crossing out the movie dialogue he has just written. He begins typing again, and the characters pick up with new lines.

From then on, the screenplay unfolds in noirish black and white (with sets and costumes in moody blacks, whites and grays), while the writer's real life unfolds in the full color of late-1940s Los Angeles.

The writer, Stine, is adapting his detective novel into a screenplay for a smarmy control freak of a producer-director. The division between real and film life begins to blur as we realize that each character in real life has his or her counterpart in the movie. Then, as the writer is pressured to compromise the integrity of his script, the detective begins talking back to him, telling him to take control.

Slinky jazz by composer Cy Coleman and lyricist David Zippel (played by a sizzling quintet instead of a full orchestra) provides a moody soundtrack to the wisecracking script by Larry Gelbart (``A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,'' ``MASH'').

Co-directors Nick DeGruccio, who played a small role in the Shubert presentation and national tour, and Todd Nielsen remain remarkably faithful to the Broadway staging, inventively adapting it to their more limited resources. The original used precisely timed moving sets and complex lighting to replicate tracking shots, close-ups and other camera moves. In the most stunning sequence here, a tracking shot down a long mansion corridor is evoked by actors who walk slowly while stage hands move toward them carrying doors that swing open as the actors ``pass through'' and a butler who steps forward and then backs off as they ``pass'' him. (Kudos, too, to the designers for so cleverly facilitating all this and more.)

The stand-out performers include Lego Louis, who - as Lt. Munoz, the detective's nemesis on the police force - lends credibility to a difficult-to-grasp character by giving a far more impassioned and compelling performance than the actor who played that role at the Shubert. Also delightful are Barbara Passolt as the jocular girl Friday and Colleen Fitzpatrick as the dangerously alluring femme fatale.

THE FACTS The show: ``City of Angels.''

Where: Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Silver Lake.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; through July 28.

Running time: Two hours, 52 minutes; one intermission.

Tickets: $22 and $25, available by calling [phone].

Our rating: Four Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Robyn Raab plays the elusive stepdaughter private in vestigator Robert Stoeckle is hired to locate in ``City of Angels'' at the Colony Studio Theatre in Silver Lake.