TAKE 'FUNNY BUSINESS' - PLEASE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

THERE MAY BE segments of the population that would pay good money to see Will Durst do stand-up. No begrudging that. Will Durst ... witty, politically astute NPR commentator. A funny guy.

There may also people out there willing to accept Ruta Lee as a guru of comedy, the kind of benevolent madame who can teach Will Durst everything she knows about the business of funny business.

And - OK, why not? - there are probably plenty of folks out there who just plain like stand-up comedy - even from relative unknowns. Even from actors playing relative unknowns.

Are the Durst fans, the Lee believers and the unknown proponents likely to find themselves in the same theater enjoying the same 90-minute evening? No, they are not. Particularly when the animal in question is an ugly beast like ``Funny Business,'' a trite and quite witless musical about comics.

Part stand-up showcase, part hokey bonding story, part identity quest, the musical by Hollye Leven feels like a bunch of half-baked notions thrown into a deep fryer with the chef wondering what will cook. The answer: none of it. Or certainly very little. The parts don't fit together. The characters are shallow and hugely trite.

The stand-up routines? Passable to quite funny. But they account for a pair of three-minute sections for each comedian. If you're jonesing for Durst, Dwayne Perkins, John Viener, Iris Bahr (or their stand-ins), that may be enough. If not, turn tail and run away.

Durst plays a burned-out funnyman named Art who is constantly and creatively trying - har de har har! - to kill himself. His fellow comics at the club where he works for pennies are constantly interrupting to pull him off the chair, cut the noose or whatever.

They include Will (played by Dwayne Perkins), an African-American comic who has a crisis of conscience over whether to perform a racially insensitive routine and Zack (Viener), a handsome WASP whose humor is based on the fact that his blue-blood parents threw him out when he decided to enter show business. Hannah (Bahr) is the apprentice comic, the club fix-it person who is just waiting to get her shot (she'll get it), and Blake (Adam K. Arian) a talentless hack who wanders in off the street and, you guessed it, also gets to go on.

Jason Paige and Becky Baeling are a pair of singers and fill-in characters who supply assorted lovers, cab drivers, ditzes, Lenny Bruce apparitions or whatever else Leven's cobbled-together plot requires. The play is supposed to be taking place on a night when a heavy-hitting scout for one of the studios is looking for a sitcom sidekick. Art, Zack and Will are all looking for a ticket out because they hate the penniless grind of stand-up. But actually they love it.

Leven's music is poppy and pulpy, obvious stuff tailored to character's establishing who they are rather than advancing any kind of plot. Ruta Lee's Iris has a truly cornball number, ``The Incredible Story of Me,'' relating how she inspired every celebrated funny person in creation. If that's true, and if Iris' joint is a place where Chris Rock comes by to try new material, then what's Iris doing with a bunch of B-level comics in her stable? Has comedy fallen on such hard times?

Apparently, if ``Funny Business'' is any indication, it certainly has.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

FUNNY BUSINESS - One and one half stars

Where: Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; indefinitely.

Tickets: $35 to $39. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Would that it were.

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Photo:

Will Durst, left, and Adam K. Arian are two of the stand-ups whose comedy stylings are on display in ``Funny Business.''