Southern CA December 11, 2002 "Bob's Holiday Office Party" presented by and at the Hudson Avenue Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Dec. 5-21. $15. (323) 856-4200. Bob's Holiday Office Party Reviewed By Paul Birchall After watching Rob Elk and Joe Keyes' riotously funny (and unhygienic) ensemble comedy, you will come to the inevitable conclusion that it is far better to enter a monastery or convent and devote yourself to a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience than to attend one more hideous office holiday party full of cackling, drunken so-called friends and rivals. Director Justin Tanner's exuberant production takes the foul horrors of the annual ritual of humiliation, debauchery, and so-called goodwill and turns it into a tour de farce of spilled cheese balls, sublimated lust, and frustrated longing. Christmas is coming, and with it arrives the invitation to the party at Bob Finhead's insurance office, which is in the quaint and seemingly inbred backwater of Neuterberg, Iowa. How can you refuse? Especially when the guest list includes reputable town denizens such as obese, screechy, and seemingly incestuous twin farmer sisters La Voris (Cheryl Hawker) and La Donna (Maile Flanagan), Bible-thumping town sheriff Joe (Keyes), deadbeat town stoner Marty (Mark Fite), and prissy mayor's wife Margie (Melissa Peterman). The booze flows like water, as do the cheese balls, and soon Margie is making loud and shrieking romantic demands on Bob (Elk), who is himself secretly planning to sell his shop to unscrupulous businessman and childhood enemy Elwin (Pat O'Brien). There's also a visit from town bar slag Brandy (a shamelessly bawdy Ann Randolph), who is soon all over Sheriff Joe. The play is fundamentally character-driven, so a synopsis cannot capture the wonderfully weird and farcically over-the-top mood that permeates this fast-paced and ferociously funny comedy. Suffice it to say, however, soon cheese balls and pretzels are a-flying, booze is a-spilling, tables are a-splitting, and the party guests are in various stages of dishabille and shrieking filthiness. The plot is tissue-slight and more atmospheric than dramatically organized. Yet the performers' comic timing is crisp as a dinner salad, as one humorously appalling and undignified spectacle follows the other. The personalities created here are uproariously vivid and broad: Flanagan and Hawker's harpy-like sisters are deliciously whiny caricatures, while Keyes' sleazy Sheriff Joe and Peterman's anally retentive yet nymphomaniacal mayor's wife are studies in wondrous comic excess. Still, Randolph inevitably steals the show whenever she's onstage, with a pair of cameos--as the foul bar floozy and as a repressed minister's wife--that are as drolly pathetic as they are showstoppingly comic.