VALLEY WEEKEND : Humor Overcomes Cliches in ‘Girly Show’ : Denise Moses creates eight characters whom she portrays with satiric flair. But the production still needs work.

Jaded theatergoers instantly assume that any one-person show is “showcase theater,” a.k.a. the Scourge of Los Angeles. But while showcase theater is exclusively concerned with displaying the wares of an actor desperate for a TV or film gig, not all one-person shows are so shallow.

Some are actually vital theater works. Steven Berkoff’s “One Man,” at UCLA, for example, was titanic a couple of seasons back. Others have more on their minds than resume building, but haven’t jelled yet. Denise Moses’ “Girly Show,” at Two Roads Theatre, is still jelling.

Exploiting her own obvious talent for shifting from one persona to another, Moses adopts eight guises all within a narrow caustic range. What we miss are those startling, 180-degree turns of character that give this gallery of types a memorable edge.

She sends out mixed messages by investing her characters with a ridicule to which they are oblivious. Her Miss Donita is a stern (but not terrifying) taskmaster, who uses a black-sock hand doll called Mr. Pussy as a teaching aid. Just when we think we’re meant to make fun of Miss Donita, though, she delivers some nice pedagogic stand-up material (Pinocchio was “a pathological liar with an insect for a friend.”)

With other types, Moses is clearer about who and what she’s satirizing, but they’re pretty easy targets. Confused Beverly, hearing her biological clock ticking and making a dating service tape, is trite, just as Miss Suzette Nubb is the thin stereotype of the blindly patriotic country singer, and Kandy is a cliche of the clueless teen beauty pageant contestant.

Moses has nowhere to go with these overly familiar stick figures except as vehicles for comic performing, where she is always on top of her game. Oddly, she is less convincing playing elderly pious Aunt Marie, but it’s one of the show’s best passages because Moses has written a character. We know where Kandy is going the instant we meet her; we’re never sure what Aunt Marie is going to say next.

That’s also true of Moses’ two-character satire of poetry readings, with prim Dame Edith introducing venomous, bitter Bernice. Here, Moses finds the perfect balance between comic tone and subject, turning Bernice into a ridiculously sincere bard, casting all men into the fires of hell. Moses’ preacher’s wife, Miz Blevins, is equally sincere, thinking her husband has been abducted by aliens.

Moses is on to something when she creates women who are reality based, no matter how wacky that reality may be. Whatever it is, it keeps them going. We don’t know if the term girly quite fits these women, but they’re definitely navigating by their own magnetic poles.

Moses is a disciplined performer, making her on-stage costume changes in a flash; now, she must discipline her own show, and cut the cliches. In that sense, “Girly Show” isn’t so much showcase as it is workshop--still under construction.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Girly Show.”

* WHERE: Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga, Studio City.

* WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Jan. 14.

* HOW MUCH: $12.50.

* CALL: (818) 766-9381.