They say you can't polish a turd, but Ming the Rude begs to differ--it's a shiny, well-executed piece of crap. Blame the playwrights, four Empty Space old-timers who reunited to pen this musical comedy, a testament to their youthful days in Empty Space's park performances. Maybe their humor works better outdoors. Maybe they were funnier 25 years ago. Maybe the Empty Space wants to emulate Seattle's bigger theaters and drive itself into the red. Whatever the justifying motivation, they should've reconsidered.

Ming is a classic tale of succession gone awry, floating in a sea of feel-good, lefty Seattle in-jokes. The king of planet Courtesy has died and his goofy son is set to inherit the throne. Enter the ambitious and evil advisor, who trips up the coronation by using a Rude Ray, turning the heir into a gassy imitation of Jack Nicholson, unfit to rule the polite planet. You know how it goes--the heir and some buddies voyage to find the secret of the Rude Ray, return to thwart the evil advisor's ascent to power, and everybody's happy.

The poor, poor cast is eminently capable, but can't spin straw into gold. Likewise, the set is cute, the direction solid, and the music catchy, but the audience slept through the jokes, offering a few conciliatory chuckles in that cute way sympathetic old theatergoers do. Ming has a few charming moments--thank you Sarah Rudinoff and Nicole Boote for your sweet, gale-force voices--but the rest of it is lousy. I love good slapstick and broad comedy, but this show is like Almost Live! on Quaaludes. With vacuous, provincial puns about the EMP, dot-coms, and Archie McPhee, mossbacks and Jean Godden will think it's a kick. The rest of us are better off somewhere else.

Get thee behind me, stinker. BRENDAN KILEY

On the Side
Rockhopper Dance at Freehold
Through Oct 18.

An evening like On the Side is well suited to beginning dance patrons; it's a sampler platter of short pieces by a variety of choreographers, some just starting out, some long-established. If one piece baffles you or leaves you cold, fear not, something completely different will be along in a moment; Carla Barragan's charming, abstract Flip-bud (which reminded me, for no reason I can explain, of sped-up films of plant movement; something about the small, twitchy hand gestures juxtaposed with more full-bodied action) was followed by the literal crime story of Wade Madsen's solo Unlucky, which alternated between mimed gutter-life activity (losing at cards, buying a gun) and swooning moves that suggested a montage of neon lights and cheap gin in some low-budget film noir.

The strongest performance was BetterBiscuitDance's Seasonal Inventory Liquidation, featuring hedgehog hairdos, obsessive scratching, and a soundtrack of clicks and murmurs. The quirky visuals and the sometimes stilted, sometimes graceful movement make this piece the choreographic equivalent of a Jan Svankmajer movie, only enacted by attractive young women instead of alarming creatures made of rusted nails, glass eyes, and ragged socks.

Amie Baca's Queen Spirit, however, was unquestionably the audience favorite, and while this pastiche of cheerleading, accompanied by a collage of songs by Queen, was certainly fun, the point was a little vague. Though tongue-in-cheek, Queen Spirit didn't seem to be satirizing cheerleaders, and as a sincere homage it paled in comparison with actual cheerleading routines. If Baca was reaching for an evocation of simple joy, Rachel Bisagni's The "Uh" and the "Huh" was much more to the point.

Performed by untrained dancers and set to the relentless beat of a nightclub dance floor, the dancing of The "Uh" was basic and even awkward, but flush with a straightforward glee in motion. BRET FETZER

Tino Does Time
Live Girls! Theater
Through Oct 26.

Something about this quirky, bighearted little show alternately warmed my cockles and blew my skirt up, even if it did seem at times to resemble a long, long train ride that really wasn't going much of anywhere.

Take Tino, played with wit and charm by Lincoln Lopez. Tino kicks off Fiona J. Torres' Hugo House-award-winning play with the warmest, funniest monologue about an alcoholic Mexican father-of-two hanging himself in an outhouse that you'll ever hear. Tino is a harmless petty street thief who gets heaved into jail, where he wrestles with the ghost/drunken memory of his dead-by-his-own-hand father and his own warm, funny madness. Meanwhile, his psychologically scarred virgin waitress sister, Magdalena (Tess Altiveros), reluctantly dates Tino's arresting officer (Erwin Galan, who waxes pathetically desperate). Comic relief and a great amount of personality are added by the confused meanderings of a potentially murderous auto garage worker called Roufo (portrayed wonderfully by David Perez--think Bob's Big Boy meets Latka).

But not much forward motion takes place. Tino wrestles his demons, Magdalena reluctantly dates her cop, and Roufo is amusing until everyone's blue in the face. Then, suddenly, Tino and Roufo are sprung from the pokey with very unsatisfying excuses. And that's it. They're free, Magdalena never puts out, the poor desperate cop never gets any. And where is Mamma, anyway?

I'm glad I rode the Tino train--I just wish the end of the line was a more satisfying destination. ADRIAN RYAN