THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Runs through: March 13

The audience on the night I attended included a few RenHeads, among them a child with enough moxie to steal the show and resell it at the Apollo, but fans of Moonie The Magnificent and Broon who know them only from their appearances at Wisconsin's Bristol Renaissance Faire should be warned that their act at the Bailiwick Arts Center is considerably bawdier—they prefer to call it 'adult'—than at their family oriented summer gig.

To be sure, what we call 'adult humor' is usually rooted in the most juvenile of sensibilities—bathrooms, bosoms and body-exploration all represent anxiety-inducing moments in human development—and the personalities adopted by this duo are no exception. Broon's manipulations of cards, balloons, edible fire and knives—the last of which leaves the floor littered with carrot shards for his partner to clean up—are framed in surly bratty-kid patter, while Moonie's silent clowning projects a cherubic innocence leading to a running gag where audiences sigh whenever he smiles. ( On the other hand, check out his Ricky Martin-styled dance at the start of a juggling routine doomed, of course, to go haywire, requiring him to repeat the sequence until his bonbon can't shake no more ) .

After each of the performers does a solo turn, they break for intermission and return for some Smothers Brothers-styled comedy of vintage not all that removed from its prototype—a poem in Dr. Suess meter, for example, accompanied by beatnik percussion and many interruptions that do nothing to keep the punch line from being telegraphed well ahead of time. And in traveling-vaudeville tradition, they acknowledge their venue with some homophile humor that nevertheless comes off as nothing so much as a coupla straight guys trying to butt-yuk it up.

But we're there for the SPECTACLE, not the satire. And those with the patience to sit through such yawners as the stunt with the supersized tit-clamps or the song about a beefcake who has a breast-transplant are amply rewarded by Broon's gruesome bed-of-nails illusion and the two comrades' thrilling tongue-to-tongue transfer of flaming propellant. Talk about your burning kisses!