CARNIVAL KNOWLEDGE at The Lex Theatre.

After watching playwright Naomi Grossman’s solo show about her travails in the Purgatorial limbo of dating and relationships, you will absolutely and categorically want to swear off men. And why not? There never was such a deplorable collection of miserable man-boys with commitment issues, immaturity, and hygiene lapses as the he-baboons that Miss Grossman courts and is courted by. Grossman’s tale is told as a monologue, placed within the context of a circus setting. The show opens with the heroine playing a whimsical game of “whack a mole,” albeit with the rodents being replaced by the jaw-unlatching collection of ginormous pink (and brown) dildoes. From there, Grossman discusses the veritable rogues gallery of dudes she has gone out with, including a lumpen Trader Joe stockboy, a hypercritical neurotic, a middle aged professional masseur with a magnormous shvance, and many more – all of whom probably had reason to regret their dalliances if they accepted their invitation to Opening Night of Grossman’s show. Director Richard Embardo’d Circus Staging, complete with crazy “freakshow” posters, a fortune teller table, and more, jazzes up Grossman’s narrative marvelously, adding color and a twisty sardonic context to the monologue. Yet, Grossman’s reliance on endless malebashing, while never actually offering any soul searching to analyze precisely why these are the men she’s attracted to, inevitably causes the piece to reduce to being little more than a one note stand up act. Still, Grossman herself is a vibrant, charismatic, and sexy protagonist, whose witty and ironic turn comes across as simultaneously sexy and world weary – a vivid embodiment of a survivor of the dating wars.

Theater: PAY ATTENTION at the Santa Monica Playhouse's Other Space.

Playwright Frank South's engrossing autobiographical solo show explores that unexpectedly shifting border that lies between the twin no man's lands of genius and madness. South has been challenged his entire life with the condition we today call attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a state defined by a frequent inability to focus, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.

And yet South's play, which sometimes appears to owe a debt of stylistic discursive gratitude to Spalding Gray, turns out to be quite different from a standard sob story "drama of affliction." It's also a Hollywood tragedy and a story of overcoming addiction, as much as it is a portrait of life with ADHD.

By any standard, his ADHD notwithstanding, South has had extraordinary success. An early writing protégé of filmmaker Robert Altman, South was also an executive producer and showrunner for the series Melrose Place, a gig he enjoyed for several years. During his life's ups and downs, South is haunted by a little imaginary demon, whom we at first assume is the embodiment of his ADHD. Only gradually do we come to realize that the demon stalking him is that voice of self-destructiveness that speaks to almost all of us.

South's narrative trajectory drifts through time, frequently echoing the disjointed thought processes of someone with ADHD. Although the piece could stand cutting, and some of South's digressions play as a prosaic laundry list chronology, director Mark Travis' deceptively unobtrusive staging crafts an intimacy that gradually leaves us feeling we know the star personally. As an actor, South's sometimes-halting line readings and stammering delivery are at first hard to penetrate; but, with his jowelly hangdog face and mildly Mephistophelean grin, he's immediately likable, and the absolute authenticity and immediacy of the performance are striking.

Presented by and at the Other Space at Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 Fourth St., Santa Monica. May 2–June 7. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m. (323) 960-7738 or www.plays411.com/payattention.

Theater: COME BACK LITTLE HORNY at the Lost Studio.

COME BACK LITTLE HORNY In playwright Laura Richardson’s clever sourball of a family comedy, mom Susan (Wendy Phillips) and dad Ian (Scott Paulin) used to be artists, but now they’re retired — read “tapped out” — and they seem to spend most of their time sniping at each other. Meanwhile, their closeted gay son Loki (Brendan Bonner) and borderline schizophrenic daughter Nora (Jennifer Erholm) still live at home, subjected to endless sneers and veiled insults thrown in their direction. Into this toxic atmosphere comes the family’s one successful scion, Stanford University professor and bestselling author Raven (Danielle Weeks), who, estranged from her clan, shows up for a visit, bringing along her newly adopted pet dog Horny (delightfully played in canine drag by Jason Paige, whose leg-humping, slobbery performance all but barks with the unfiltered love that the human characters can’t express to each other). Raven’s latest book is a hostile but truthful roman à clef about her family — and, as they peruse the book, the clan is forced to confront the miserable truth. Director Martha Demson’s character-driven production artfully emphasizes the subtext underlying the family’s brittle relationship. Not a line is spoken that doesn’t seep with layers of corrosive back story. Although the pacing occasionally falters — and the piece frankly could use some cutting, particularly during the final third — the writing is smartly full of just the sorts of lines you hope never to hear from your mother. The ensemble work boasts some ferocious acting turns, particularly from Phillips’ scathingly bitter mother and Weeks’ superficially loving, passively hostile daughter. Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. LaBrea Ave., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; through June 20. (310) 600-3682. (Paul Birchall)

Theater: THE DEVIL WITH BOOBS.

There's vomit! There's piss! There's drool! There are ginormous, watermelon-sized plastic breasts, capped with kiwi-sized nippilonis! How can you not love director Tom Quaintance's phenomenally daffy production of Dario Fo's deliciously amoral farce? This is a charming production that takes goofy surreal gaggery to such bad taste, tacky extremes, it's impossible to be grossed out or offended – you'd have to be a churl, like so many of the delicious farce's characters. Set in 16th Century Italy, the play concerns an uptight, morally rigid Judge (Michael Winters), who is so repressed he downs laxatives so that if he feels sexual desire, it will be utterly offset by the need to explosively defecate. A pair of demons plot to possess the Judge and force him to commit sins that will sentence him to hell. To do this, apprentice demon Barlocco (Sparber) is to burrow into the anus of the Judge and take over his body. Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and the demon actually enters the body of the Judge's brittle crone of a housekeeper Pizzocca (Katherine Griffith), turning her from a zaftige battleaxe into a horny slut with eyes for His Honor's honor. Complications ensue when a corrupt Cardinal (Weston Blakesley) arrives in town, with sleazy plans of his own. Fo presents farce with a sharp political edge – and between the scenes of randy abandon and devilish glee, there are vulpine jabs at the church, the law, and human greed. Along with this, Quaintance presents a show that is visually perfect: Christina Wright's gorgeous Italian comedia buffo costumes are amazing, and the piece is anchored by Alex Wright's beautiful music and background songs. As for the piece's comic timing, it's perfect. A scene involving the Cardinal, a huge bucket of horse feces, and a bottle of freshly decanted demon piss is a study in simultaneous horror and hilarity. As the much put upon Judge, Winters is a fantastic straight man, but the show truly belongs to Griffith's toweringly comic turn as the haplessly possessed housekeeper. On a dime, she manages to shift from mean rat bag to brutish demon to lustful she devil, offering a performance that is versatile, yet impeccably nuanced.

Theater: Desperate Writers at the Edgemar Theater Center.

It's not just the writers who appear desperate in this clubfooted comedy by Joshua Grenrock and Catherine Schreiber, it's the actors, too. And, after about twenty minutes of being trapped in the world of this unpleasant, pseudo-glib, and wearisome Hollywood farce, the audience quickly becomes desperate, as well. This is one of those comedies which appears written by Hollywood fringe insiders, who are indeed desperate – desperate to work off the hostility and envy of a Tinseltown that has never given them the cash, power, and glittering prizes that are their supposed just deserts. Folks like this inevitably write Hollywood "comedies" that "trenchantly skewer" the excesses and shallowness of Tinseltown – excesses and shallownesses which they'd be only too happy to engage in given half the chance. David (Brian Krause) and Ashley (Kate Hollinshead) are lovers and co-writers, toiling on their script in the hopes of making a sale that will allow them to get married and live the life they've wanted – no, that they deserve (they think). Shame on those evil movie executives for not bowing to the inevitable and snapping up their opuses! When David and Ashley can't get a meeting to save their life, they do the most logical thing they can think of: They kidnap three sleazy movie moguls (Grenrock, Schreiber, and Andrew Ross Wynn), and imprison them in a cage, until the execs agree to read David's script. Although one exec has a heart attack, the others are soon engaged in a bidding war for David's work, thus proving that crime pays many dividends. Admittedly, Schreiber and Grenrock aren't aiming any higher than Generic Sit Com, but even by those standards the writing is surface glib, with little content or psychological believability. The characters, intended as being charming, are flat out repulsive, with Krause and Hollinshead's self-justifying, creepy writer couple being particularly offputting. The stock stereotype trio of moguls are little more than standard issue movie biz scuzzbuckets: We sense that the writers could have used the premise to actually spoof specific Hollywood types and characters, but there's the ultimate sense that, well, the authors don't actually seem to know much about what they're writing about – with the result that the piece descends into clumsy gags, chaotic shtick, and a feelgood finale that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, all things considered. Maybe it might be time for a moratorium on the sort of drama in which a character kidnaps another character and gets rewarded for it.