Dorothy Parker’s Life of Counterpoints

Legend has it that Dorothy Parker once encountered a younger woman who held open a door and said, “Age before beauty.” The famous wit reportedly swept past and without missing a beat replied: “Pearls before swine.”

This must be virtually the only famous Parker anecdote missing from “Dorothy Parker: Lady of the Corridor,” Victoria E. Thompson’s touching and surprisingly comprehensive tribute at Theatre Geo in Hollywood.

Thompson’s solo show succeeds in spite of a dubious technique that stitches together bits and pieces from the Algonquin writer’s stories, interviews, poems and book and theater reviews. While this crazy-quilt approach could easily have lacked focus and depth, Thompson’s shrewd editing and powerful portrayal actually yields an understanding of Parker’s art and the lonely woman who produced it.

For the uninitiated, Thompson reels off the better-known Parkerisms (“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses”), which here afford a rich counterpoint to accounts of the writer’s failed marriages and checkered career at Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines.

But the show is strongest in dramatizing bracingly ironic stories such as “Just a Little One,” in which a drunk woman gradually reveals the depths of her misery and denial, and “Arrangement in Black & White,” about a giddy suburban matron whose racism is hidden beneath a cloak of professed open-mindedness.

As directed by Geo Hartley, Thompson gives a flinty, deliciously sardonic performance, funny and heartbreaking without an ounce of self-pity. What more could Parker fans demand?

* “Dorothy Parker: Lady of the Corridor,” Theatre Geo, 1229 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. Sundays, 12:30 p.m. Ends July 16. $14. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.