'Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother':

The Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre has always aimed at pleasing the masses. Nothing too controversial, nothing challenging.

But with "Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother" playing in their off-Broadway theater, even this venue has aimed too low.

This poor excuse for a musical, based on Lois Wyse's best-selling 1988 book, is not worth the effort.

The venue must have thought they had a sure-fire winner, given the older age of much of our population; it's a safe bet many are grandparents and would be attracted to a show like this.

But at intermission, the grandparents seated around me were yawning. One commented, "I'm bored out of my gourd.

"What this show needs is some car chases and gun shots," she added, pointing out what the show sorely lacks: any real conflict or drama. The little conflicts it does present - the parents can't get Grandma to babysit, Grandpa leaves Grandma for a younger woman - just don't engage the audience.

The one thing you don't ever want the audience saying is "Who cares?" But with its lightweight scenarios and insipid humor, there are no characters to care about or follow through the course of the show.

It's tripe: recycled jokes you've heard before or read on the Internet, scenarios that aren't funny, and songs you forget immediately after you've heard them.

Maybe this material made an amusing little book, but it's too slight to hold your attention for two hours, though the half dozen actors try their best.

The grandmother in the audience who wished for gun shots got her wish early in Act II, when the cast swaggers around in cowboy outfits singing, "There oughta be a law to outlaw in-laws." Then the entire cast shoots each other. There they are, all on the floor, pretending to be dead.

"Good!" said a grandmother seated by me. "Maybe now we can all go home."

But no, the show lurched on.

It's not the actors' fault; this is a very talented group of people on-stage. It's the material: sad, stale and out-of-date. It's as boring as a stranger buttonholing you and telling you every last excruciating detail about her grandchild.

"Funny," which isn't, stars an engaging trio of women: Marci Bing, Karen Pappas and Jenny Hollander-Carosiello. God knows there aren't very many roles for mature women, and many shows at the Broadway Palm are filled with actors in their early 20's. So it's great to see these talented women on stage. I just wish they had better material.

Bing and Pappas are full of spark and zest. Bing drew laughs as a grandma who tries yoga and skiing, with each new activity creating

a new injury. And her song about seeing her late husband's eyes in her new grandchild had

some in the audience crying.

Pappas gamely dresses in outlandish baby clothes to play a one-year-old granddaughter.

And it's good to see Hollander-Carosiello back on a local stage. She impressed the crowd in "Granny's Gotta Dance" by dancing hip-hop, a country line dance, and the tango.

David Jon Davis plays Grandpa to all three women, and Elizabeth Christine Tanner and Jonathan Goodman play all the daughter and son parts. Musical director William Asher, ensconced in a corner, accompanies the cast on piano.

"It's nothing special," I overheard one woman say at intermission. "I certainly wouldn't recommend it."

And I don't either. ¦ If you go

>>What: "Funny, You Don't Look Like a

Grandmother"

>>Where: The Off-Broadway Palm Dinner

Theatre, 1380 Colonial Blvd. >>When: through Dec. 22 >>Cost: $23 - $44 >>Info: Call 278-4422 or go to

www.BroadwayPalm.com