`JAILS' HOLDS US CAPTIVE WITH HUMOR.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Be careful: You may become what you consume.

If there's a single, simple message that can be distilled from ``Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop,'' Danny Hoch's scrappily intelligent, pugnaciously funny new solo show, this may be it.

Whether it's the sexual braggadocio of rap, the mindless fashion slavery of MTV and Tommy Hilfiger, or the Big Lie propaganda that flows from Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood, Hoch strongly advises us, his audience, to pay close attention to what we're swallowing. After all, what we don't know can hurt us.

Take Victor, a young, Puerto Rican shooting victim whose uncanny mixture of street smarts and crippling naivete gives new meaning to the phrase ``walking wounded.'' Flirting with a girl, Victor confesses his dream is to fly a stealth bomber for Uncle Sam, though his life thus far hardly conforms to anyone's patriotic ideal of the American Dream.

Or the upstate New York prison guard who's been sent to a female counselor after roughing up an inmate. Like nearly all Hoch's characters, the guard feels overpowered by vague forces beyond his control. Between taunts, he quietly recalls picking apples on a nearby orchard, years before the massive penitentiary was built.

It's that kind of troubling confession - compassion and humanity jostling with subtle social commentary - in which Hoch's writing truly takes flight. At their best, his deftly rendered characterizations, punctuated by Jo Bonney's direction and Stan Pressner's lighting design, can whack you upside the head like a hurled 40-ounce can of malt liquor.

In the 90-minute show, which he also wrote, Hoch typecasts himself as the perpetual outsider, a white homeboy who sees that hip-hop isn't about style, but about the willingness to identify with the underclass.

His signature character is a white Montana teen and his black rapper alter-ego, who imagines himself chatting with Jay Leno between bouts of yelling with his mom through the bedroom door. The belligerent poses Hoch strikes before an imaginary mirror suggest a B-Boyz version of Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle in ``Taxi Driver'': ``You talkin' to me?''

Not that Hoch prescribes winning through intimidation as an antidote to the ghetto (either Brooklyn or Billings variety). His toughest character ultimately may be the gentle, funny Gabriel, a disabled, speech-impaired son of a crack-addicted mother, and a die-hard Yankees fan to boot. Hmm, maybe there's something to be said for patriotism after all.

Working only with a grab bag of baseball caps and flannel shirts, which he plucks off two metal filing cabinets, Hoch paws his way through the contradictions of a city, and a time in history. It's New York, city of 7 million voices, which Hoch seems to have absorbed through his pores.

THE FACTS

What: ``Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop.''

Where: The Actors' Gang, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. No performance Nov. 26.

Tickets: $25; $10 student tickets. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars.