Let me begin by professing my deep and surprising affection for the original Teatro ZinZanni, 1999's Love, Chaos, and Dinner. Running wild with a high-art dinner-theater concept, ZinZanni #1 won over both hungry suburbanites and snooty skeptics with its blend of good food and knockout entertainment. But after attending Teatro ZinZanni's new show, Dinner & Dreams--twice--I'm wondering if the debut's triumph wasn't beginner's luck.

Dinner & Dreams isn't a disaster. The food is great, and a handful of the performers-- trapeze duo Die Maiers, improv artist Kevin Kent, contortionist Aurelia Cats--are dazzling. But for every bit that dazzles, a half-dozen fall flat.

This can't be blamed on the performers themselves. Each of the acts, from Mexi-crooner El Vez to opera diva Nancy Emmerich, has something to offer. But where Love flowed gracefully from drag shenanigans to operatic arias to tap-dancing dynamos, Dreams klunks and drags, with audiences made to smile gamely through a parade of entertainments that are unfortunately similar in both tone and execution.

Call it Attack of the Kooks: First there's Wayne Doba, the kooky car salesman with his equally kooky girlfriend, MitziLu. Then there's ZinZanni's kooky musical chefs, Les Voila!, followed by the kooky-in-a-sexy-way El Vez and the kooky-in-an-Asian-way Geisha, followed by more of the kooky chefs and kooky MitziLu, who begins to seem less kooky and more brain-damaged, and then there's the kooky, kinky "Maitre She," a crop-wielding Austrian dominatrix who miraculously transforms from one tired stereotype into an even more tired stereotype, and where's my goddamn soup?

Far too many of the laughs this parade of kooks manage to draw from the audience derive from politeness and duty, rather than surprise and delight. And that's just no fun.

But these quibbles are neither here nor there: The show's sold out through August. (Those of you tempted by free tix via work/parents/underground connections--think hard.)