COMEDY REVIEW : Russian Plies His Fish-Out-of-Water Act Into Success

It almost doesn’t matter that Yakov Smirnoff is a marginal comedian with thin material largely engineered off one basic premise.

He is clearly the best Russian comic to reach his level of stardom. Of course, he’s the only Russian comic to reach his level of stardom.

That’s the kind of cue-the-rimshot joke Smirnoff tells, so obvious that even a barfly might be reluctant to tell it, while most professional funny folks would wince if it even crossed their mind.

But as a Russian emigre, Smirnoff is the classic fish out of water whose bemused outsider’s view puts a different spin on otherwise mundane observations about American customs and idioms.

Incredibly, that is pretty much the whole idea behind his act-- that’s the joke. (And if this sounds like an oversimplification, rest assured that there is no way to oversimplify Yakov Smirnoff’s humor.)

More incredibly--partly because he’s bright, engaging and absolutely harmless--he not only gets away with this comedic murder, he has parlayed it into a measure of multimedia success.

He has starred in his own sitcom (“What a Country!”), appeared in films (“Moscow on the Hudson” and “Brewster’s Millions,” among others), written a book (“America on Six Rubles a Day”) and--not coincidentally--proved to be a huge draw Thursday at the Newport Beach Laff Stop, where he opened a 2-night, 4-show stand.

So in a sense, it’s unimportant that without this gimmick, this hook on which to hang his “jokes,” he would just be another likable but enormously unfunny comedian.

All you could do Thursday was wait for that occasional patch of inspired whimsy--that rare joke that transcended the level of a precocious 12-year-old’s gag--and make bets with yourself about the vast majority that seemed unlikely to.

For instance, halfway through Thursday’s set, during a strange little question-and-answer segment, someone asked how he got out of Russia. The instant Smirnoff hit the phrase “I applied for a visa,” you couldn’t help worrying that he might stoop to a credit card joke. Sure enough, a beat later, he delivered the “Mastercard” reference.

Then there was the side-splitting segment on his initial reactions to assorted American expressions. Upon first hearing “it’s raining cats and dogs,” Smirnoff recalled, “the first thought that crossed my mind was: ‘Umbrellas wouldn’t help.’ ” Now is that comedy, or what?

A second later, he re-created his zany first encounter with another American idiom when a woman told him “I quit smoking cold turkey.” To which he replied “Whatever makes you happy.” Wait, wait--get this-- then he said: “What do you smoke now--ham?”

You can just imagine the gales of laughter at that one.

Thankfully, there were a few instances when playing off phrases or cliches reached a slightly more imaginative level. In the midst of an overlong anecdote about his recent marriage and honeymoon, he told of going shopping for an engagement ring. The jeweler said, “Remember, diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Smirnoff’s response: “I took a look at the price and said, ‘Do you have anything in a casual acquaintance?’ ”

Sometimes, instead of riding down the one-way path of disconcerting American sayings, Smirnoff traveled back and forth over the linguistic gap between Russian and English.

Early in Thursday’s show, he explained that in Russian, “yep” means sex, so naturally he thought it odd to hear Americans so frequently and indiscriminately saying “yep.” Not exactly knee-slapping stuff, either. But he turned it into a rather nice recurring joke, pulling more laughs with each mention, in the same Pavlovian way that his signature phrase (“What a country”) works.

The question-and-answer period was a mixed bag by its very nature (it helped mask the lack of strong material, but fostered a warm, informal atmosphere) and in the kind of humor it produced. Some Smirnoff responses maintained the lame, predictable status quo:

“Is Yakov Smirnoff your real name?”

“No, it used to be Jack Daniels.”

But there were one or two exchanges with an otherwise woefully underused element: surprise.

“What’s the most basic freedom you have here that you didn’t have in Russia?”

”. . .I think that you have one of the greatest things here that they didn’t have in Russia--warning shots.”

But then it was back to those oh-so-literal basics. There was a section on Smirnoff walking through grocery store aisles, confronted by one product marked “try this” (which he did), another box labeled “look inside for free surprise” (which he also did). . . .

There’s only one thing you can say about someone who not only can get a laugh but a full-blown career out of jokes like that: What a country.