LOH DOES A SATISFYING SOLO IN `ALIENS IN AMERICA'.

Byline: Reed Johnson Theater Critic

In ``Aliens in America,'' her pensively funny new solo show at the Tiffany Theaters in West Hollywood, Sandra Tsing Loh applies the same anthropological scrutiny to her Chinese-German family that Margaret Mead might've lavished on a band of South Sea Islanders.

Consider, for instance, this pithy four-word snapshot of Loh's irascible, Shanghai-born father as he perches one evening in his customary habitat, the family living room: ``National Geographic. Head Pillow.''

Or Loh's incisive description of her ingratiating, German-born mother's habit of dressing her two daughters in ludicrous Alpine-Oriental outfits that made them appear to have ``more unnatural appendages than jackalopes.''

If brevity is the soul of wit, Loh may be the funniest woman in America in under five minutes flat. That's roughly the time she gets for her weekly National Public Radio commentaries, in which she regales listeners with scientifically lucid observations about Los Angeles, the Valley (where she makes her home) and life at the bottom of the celebrity food chain.

Think of Loh as a sort of Dorothy Parker of the clued-in but terminally undercapitalized.

In ``Aliens in America,'' she offers a self-effacing yet prismatically revealing peek behind the scenes at her youth and adolescence amid a multicultural upbringing that was less ``exotic'' than simply chaotic.

First and best of these vignettes is ``My Father's Chinese Wives,'' a painfully humorous account of her dad's attempt to find a mail-order Asian bride after the death of Loh's mother.

A retired aerospace engineer, Loh's father materializes here as a wily, shape-shifting character ``who in the movies would be named Old Dragon Whiskers.'' His parsimony, both financial and emotional (e.g. using an old Frosted Flakes box as a briefcase, never giving birthday cards), went in tandem with a mercurial temper. (Seriously - a Frosted Flakes box? As Loh writes in a program note, ``only the most outrageous elements of tonight's stories are true.'')

This vivid tale, which carries the emotional impact of a well-crafted short story, climaxes with a description of the family get-together at which Loh and her sister awkwardly sit down to dinner with their father and his young replacement wife. When the old man throws a fit over some trivial issue, his bride lapses into helpless laughter. For a change, Loh's father cracks up, too.

Though her sister is mortified at the outburst, Loh observes that time is slowly draining the fury from her father's soul.

``He's just old,'' she tells her sibling with perfect yin-yang equipoise. ``He's just old.''

Monologue No. 2, ``Ethiopian Vacation,'' relates a 1969 family excursion to the war-torn African country made at Loh's father's behest, mainly because it was cheaper than, say, Hawaii. The disastrous trip (bumpy airliners, bad food) culminates with the family and two busloads of tourists being taken at gunpoint by Eritrean guerrillas.

``This is the end of my life,'' Loh thinks. ``I will never get to see a glittery ballroom built right over the sea.''

Though the crisis ends happily, more or less, that wasn't the case for Loh's parents' marriage, which we learn slowly deteriorated into a tense ``compromise between two opposites,'' leaving only ``two strangers under one roof.''

Perhaps Homo sapiens, Loh seems to conclude, was poorly designed for happiness.

``Musk,'' the show's least original but most twistedly optimistic skit, recounts Loh's first exposure to hot-tub culture as an anxious college freshman. The contretemps that follows should elicit sympathetic shudders of amusement from any student of Angeleno mating rituals.

Working again with director David Schweizer, Loh continues to polish her performance skills. Here she augments her crisp vocal delivery with a repertoire of funny, gawky arabesques and jerky plies that alternately suggest a newborn colt testing its limbs, or a spastic shadow puppet.

Jason Adams' simple, utilitarian set (framed by Chinese takeout cartons), Rand Ryan's ambient lighting and the humorously evocative J Payne/Catasonic sound design work together nicely.

But it is Loh's cheeky prose voice, coolly objective but ultimately forgiving, that makes ``Aliens in America'' a postcard album of touching, funny, unsentimental journeys into selfhood.

It's a bent valentine to an offbeat family whose members all seem to have been carrying different passports.

The Facts

What: Sandra Tsing Loh performs ``Aliens in America.''

Where: Tiffany Theaters, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through Oct. 3.

Tickets: $25 to $32.50. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars.

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Photo

PHOTO Sandra Tsing Loh turns life in L.A. into compelling theater with ``Aliens in America.''

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer