The Groundlings Resurface With New Satire and Improv

The Groundlings have returned with a new revue, “Groundlings Confidential,” a pastiche of topical satire, sketches and audience improv.

“It starts with a heavy metal ‘Lite’ duet,” said troupe member-turned-director Deanna Oliver. Next, “Elizabeth the Queen” targets the National Endowment for the Arts, as the queen demands an anti-obscenity oath from William Shakespeare. Oliver describes “woMEN” as “a classic role reversal: The women are pushing the guys to have a drink and loosen up; the guys are nervous and go to the bathroom together. They work at Bullock’s; the girls are attorneys.”

Also on the comedy agenda: an improv song by Peobo Snow (heretofore unknown brother of Phoebe Snow), a visit to the Planet of the Handsome Men, a salute to Slim-Fast, and an improv piece spoofing Ted Koppel. “We pick a mundane problem--like people who talk in the theater or static cling--and treat it as a world issue,” Oliver explained. “It’s like, ‘Why hasn’t Congress addressed this terrible problem?’ ”

Also opening this month:

Today: Look for the man’s point of view--on success, happiness and mortality--in Sidney Goldberg’s “Pokerfaces and Castanets,” a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. Avi Hoffman (“Finkel’s Follies”) directs.

Today: Now look for the woman’s point of view--on seven courageous females throughout history, including Anne Hutchinson and Bella Abzug--in Estelle Busch and Alice Josephs’ “A Woman’s Place,” starring Busch, at the Flight Theatre in Hollywood.

Wednesday: 2nd Avenue Productions debuts with a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Bronx- Angst “Savage in Limbo” at the newly renovated Celebrity Center Theatre in Hollywood.

Thursday: The daughter of Canadian meat king Marty Shankburger tries to marry into a vegetarian animal-rights family in Jack Breschard and Patrick Snyder’s comedy “Four Legs Good: A Farce About Our Fellow Creatures” at Theatre East in Studio City.

Thursday: L.A. Theatre Works presents a one-night reading of Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons’ “Top Secret: A Battle for the Pentagon Papers” at the Santa Monica Guest Quarters Suite Hotel. The cast includes Marsha Mason, Hector Elizondo and Stacy Keach.

Thursday: John Epperson, a.k.a Lypsinka, brings his one-person off-Broadway hit “I Could Go On Lip-Synching” to the Callboard Theatre in West Hollywood.

Thursday: A man hires a hit man to kill his wife in “Faithful” by Chazz Palminteri (“A Bronx Tale”), premiering at the Court Theatre in West Hollywood. Mark W. Travis directs.

Friday: Adapted by Carl R. Mueller and directed by Martin Magner, Gerhart Hauptmann’s 1890 comedy of thieves, “The Beaver Coat,” comes to the Harman Avenue Theatre in Hollywood.

Friday: Performance artist Tim Miller pulls from his works “Buddy Systems,” “Some Golden States” and “Stretch Marks”--and adds new material--for “Sex/Love/Stories” at Highways in Santa Monica.

Friday: Two one-acts, Richard Harrity’s “Hope Is a Thing With Features” and Marsha Sheiness’ “Professor George,” share a bill at Hollywood’s Open Fist Theatre.

Friday: Emlyn Williams’ thriller “Night Must Fall” is revived at Actors Alley in North Hollywood.

Saturday: Singer-songwriter Kirby Tepper returns in his one-man “kirbysomething” at the Gardenia in Hollywood, for one night.

March 14: David Wiltse’s comedy “Doubles” makes its West Coast debut at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood. Don Most (formerly of TV’s “Happy Days”) directs.

March 14: A mother-daughter bond is the subject of Lee Blessing’s “Independence” at the Gnu Theatre in North Hollywood.

March 15: The performance group Shrimps offers excerpts from “Tongue” on the same bill with Harry Kipper in his “Nightmare--A Dream of Biblical Murder” at Beyond Baroque in Venice.

March 16: Piper Laurie (“Twin Peaks”) performs her one-woman show, “The Last Flapper”--based on the writings and correspondence of Zelda Fitzgerald--in a benefit at the Women’s Center at Council House in Hollywood.

March 16: The ghosts of convention wreak havoc on a woman in Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills.

March 19: Bertolt Brecht’s “The Wedding,” a lampoon of the pretensions of the lower middle class, opens at Hollywood’s Taper, Too. Vladimir Strnisko directs.

March 22: Beyond Baroque is host at a special fund-raiser, “666 & His Friends,” featuring fiction, poetry and performance by Sandra Bernhard, Dennis Cooper, Mike Kelly and Benjamin Weissman.

March 22: An eccentric lighthouse keeper deals with her daughter, her husband (who had been presumed dead) and an intriguing stranger in William Sterritt’s mythological comedy “Calliope Rose” at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica.

March 27: “Hot Wire,” a collection of short performance works by Merry O’Cleary, Dale Griner and Stuart Bailey, Eduardo Santiago and W. Wayne Karr (and others) plays one night only at Highways.