COURTESY OF THE SUMMER CABARET AT YALE

Funny you should mask.

EYE

Created and directed by Alex Knox. Starring Knox, Nikki Berger, Carter Gill, Brian Hastert and Erica Sullivan. Through July 28 at the Summer Cabaret at Yale, 217 Park St., New Haven. (203) 432-1567, summercabaret.org.

It would be more appropriate if I could write this review without using any words. EYE does quite well without them. It also works wonders without ever changing the expressions on its characters' faces.

Both limitations occur because the five performers are wearing masks. But limitations can be freeing; in live theater narrowing the vocabulary and gestures is the essence of style, especially with comedy as fluid and funny as found in EYE. It's more than a funny face; it's literally a funny face created by four players, one portraying a nose, one a mouth, and the other two what you might call the title characters. EYE never exactly explains why it's called that, but whatever you want to call this fetching sketch revue, it's hard to take your eyes off it.

Watching one of EYE's longer set pieces, a comic martial arts battle, you see the wide-open mouth on one of the fighter's masks, when joined with upraised arms, represent a shout of victory. A split second later, he doubles over due to a swift kick in the stomach, and the excat same face is now a scream of pain. It's an eye-opening image, hard visual evidence that simplicity is the soul of wit.

Most of EYE's masks bear amusing blank expressions, with small eyes and flat lines for mouths, a bit like the jumpy Terence and Philip show-within-a-show on South Park. But the EYE troupe are three-dimensional and they don't fart around. One of them paints pictures with his Pinocchio-like nose. Another masquerades as a sort of Eye God. Another shakes her booty in a way that should make the others' jaws drop, only their jaws aren't allowed to.

The leisurely, human feel of EYE is both a curse and a blessing. It has the stop-start appeal of a sketch revue, but one that you learn is only as good as its perfomers' skills at mime and timing. You know, for instance, that they're unlikely to burst into song, and the dark, moody lighting rightly suggests that no extravagant visual effects are forthcoming. But the humanity—those forlorn deadpan masks—is the real trick here. EYE is not pretending to be Blue Man Group, or Pilobolus, or Tap, where the group's silence is the result of removing one element so another (acrobatics, rhythm) can be more pronounced.

Here, the silence suits the characters. They're quiet, withdrawn, and they walk through a dark uncertain world in real time. They also move to real music—unlike the usual sickening Cirque du Soleil soundtrack schlock, EYE prances to proper pop music: ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky," Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" and, in a number that would be far too long if the song wasn't so great, Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly."

EYE springs from the theater experiments of Yale School of Drama student Alex Knox, who originated it as his Senior Honors Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. EYE's long gestation shows; Knox has fully realized his stage universe, and has had time to attend to every detail: Besides setting the pace with his own performance, he directed it and drew some delightful cartoons for the program. What more can I say? He's got a good EYE.

carnott@newhavenadvocate.com