'Squeeze Box' aims for humanity as much as humor
LOWELL -- Ann Randolph has done sketch comedy with the acclaimed Los Angeles group the Groundlings and with her own troupe, Unsafe Sketch. She has also worked for 10 years in a shelter for homeless women who are mentally ill. Those pieces of her life come together -- along with an online dating service, a spoiled friend who worked in a leper colony, and an inexplicably alluring accordionist -- in her sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious, and wildly uneven one-woman show, ''Squeeze Box."
Randolph can be very funny, in the broad, bawdy style of sketch comedy, and she conveys real affection for some of her characters -- particularly Brandy, a ''paranoid schizophrenic crackhead" who plays the bad hand she's been dealt with outrageous, obscene humor. You can see why the late Anne Bancroft wanted to play this part; she and her husband, Mel Brooks, produced the show in LA and New York, and she and Randolph were developing a movie version when Bancroft died last year.
But you can also see why, as Randolph noted in an after-show talk back with the audience, Brooks and Bancroft urged her to edit her material. The first version ran more than two hours; it's down to just over an hour now, a length that makes far more sense for what it is, but it could still use further shaping and refinement.
As it stands, ''Squeeze Box" occupies a sometimes uneasy position between broad sketch and serious drama. Randolph has a lot of fun switching voices and mannerisms for the people she evokes -- the earthy Brandy, the pretentious Shoshanna, the clueless born-again co-worker Julie, the awkward boyfriend-accordionist Harold -- but they are mostly caricatures, not characters. Only the women she counsels in the shelter really seem to earn her sympathy (and, through her, ours); the rest she sees only from the outside. That makes them funny, often, but seldom real, and funny unreality is only funny for so long.
That wouldn't matter if Randolph were staying squarely in the world of sketch comedy, where quick laughter is the only coin. But she wants more for ''Squeeze Box," and that makes us want more, too. Randolph is not just telling silly stories about crazy people; she is groping toward a deeper understanding of our shared humanity, our shared longing for real meaning.
That's important and worth doing. And it can certainly be done with laughter. For the shifts from jokes to tears to work, though, they need to be subtle and persuasive, and Randolph needs to present all her characters, not just the ones she likes, with a compassionate understanding of their inner lives. She also needs to refine her vocal skills, modulating the relentlessly fast, loud pitch of stand-up into something more complex and shaded.
Right now, ''Squeeze Box" offers some easy laughs and occasional glimpses of profound insight. With more care, it could move to something greater: profound laughter.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com. 
