Just For Fun

By JAY COCKS

THE COMPASS by Janet Coleman

Knopf; 349 pages; $22.95

These are the jokes! Severn Darden, the eccentric and fitfully inspired comic performer, once solemnly announced to his audience an upcoming lecture by Bruno Bettelheim on "Some Positive Aspects of Anti-Semitism."

Rim shot, please. Or, more appropriate for the time (the mid-1950s) and place (the environs of the University of Chicago), a wry smile and a knowing bob of the head above a woolly black turtleneck. Nothing as show biz as drum punctuation would suit an enterprise as groundbreaking, mind teasing and -- all right, all right -- history making as Chicago's Compass Theater.

The Compass began as a "storefront theater with educational intentions," the creation of two intellectual insurrectionists, Paul Sills and David Shepherd. The actors who gravitated to it made it into a proving ground for improvisational theater and a sort of comedy cabaret for Mensa members.

Darden, who liked to wear capes and tool around town in a vintage Rolls, was a perfect archetype for the troupe: brainy, unorthodox, funny, demanding and supercilious. He takes up a lot of space in this dishy backstage book: even here, the star system prevails. Despite the author's strenuous attempts at seriousness, the eruptive, disruptive talents who made the theater memorable are the same ones who make The Compass a good read.

Shelley Berman, who broke through to mainstream success, was in awe of Mike , Nichols and enamored of Elaine May. Nichols, a struggling Method actor from New York City, found his metier in improvised comedy and a partner, a lover and a nemesis in May. Everyone at the Compass played for laughs, but of all the hothouse talent there, only Nichols, May and a few others turned out to be playing for keeps. The Compass foundered in conflicting ideologies and ended in a welter of mangled egos and bad feelings. But it pointed the way to a kind of comedic theater that spawned other groups, like the Second City and the Committee, and changed the way America laughs for good.