‘U.N.V. Me’ Satirizes the Usual Targets

Talk about a bad hair day.

Lila Chanel, in Deborah Wakeham’s solo show “U.N.V. Me” at Coast Playhouse, is a well-heeled Westside actress whose trendy life is coming comically unglued. Her husband has run off with another woman, her dog was shot by a trigger-happy security guard and her hair extensions are falling out in clumps.

Wakeham’s conceit is to have an earthquake trap this archetypal Angeleno in her garage and then let us chortle at her self-absorbed helplessness. Of course, Lila deserves this sort of humiliation, the show implies, because she is vain and shallow and treats her Latina maid like dirt.

Wakeham has a sharp eye for those peculiar brands of West Coast folly satirized by Woody Allen and others. The problem is that virtually all of her targets--therapy, the self-help movement, breast implants, show-biz insincerity--have been lampooned to death. “U.N.V. Me,” as directed by Philip D’Arbanville, hardly adds anything new.

While Wakeham, a former ballet dancer, is a gifted physical comedian--one bit in which she gets stoned and slides all over her car is especially funny--she traps herself in a most unenviable position: How can you ridicule a character who is more pitiful than anything else?

* “U.N.V. Me,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 7. $20. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.