A spontaneous spoof for news junkies Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic Monday, July 15, 2002	RIPPED FROM THE NEWS: Improvisational comedy. Created and performed by True Fiction Magazine. (Through July 28. At the Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. One hour, 35 minutes. Tickets $22-$37. Call (415) 441-8822 or visit http://www.magictheatre.org/).

Remember the one about the Chinese walking fish taking over parts of Maryland? How about the story about WorldCom's making its employees agree not to join any class-action suits if they want their severance packages? Or the secret stash of whiskey on Air Force One?

It helps to be a news junkie to fully appreciate the talents of True Fiction Magazine, the 15-year-old improvisational comedy troupe now in residence at the Magic Theatre. Otherwise you might think the actors are just making it up. But every plot line in "Ripped From the News," which opened Friday, is taken from a recent news story. Well, almost every item. So far as I know, Regina Saisi made up that bit about "the president's best stuff, Old Hound Dog."

The script is nothing more than a jumble of newspapers on a table in the lobby. Audience members cull items, tear out an interesting piece and deposit it in a cardboard box that is brought to the stage a few minutes before the show starts. The five Fictionistas (down from seven a few years ago) pick articles and tack them to small bulletin boards at the four corners of the stage.

Two articles are selected and their opening paragraphs read -- on Friday they were The Chronicle's story about scientists creating an artificial virus (and its potential terrorist applications) and the New York Times follow-up to the walking fish item, revealing that the environmental disaster was caused by a man importing the fish to make soup for his ailing sister. (The WorldCom story was added in the second act).

Almost immediately, lean, redheaded Barbara Scott was slouched in a chair, gasping for her hulking, milquetoast-ish brother (Paul Killam) to get her a walking fish. Petite blond Diane Rachel and lanky, intense Saisi became an entire market of Chinese fish-peddlers hawking their wares. And Killam's mild, put-upon character was wading into an imaginary pond to try to capture Scott's very wary, fluid and sneakily resourceful walking and paddling fish.

Working in the round, with no set or costume changes, the five actors (tall,quietly versatile Craig Neibaur is the fifth) create new sets of characters, creatures and sound effects as they interweave disparate plot lines into what turns out to be a more-or-less-unified whole. The able Joshua Raoul Brody provides steady genre-appropriate keyboard accompaniment as "lighting improviser" Mark Rachel punctuates the scenes with blackouts.

Some of the plot twists, quick adaptations and quips ("I'm sorry, I seem to have overstepped the bounds of my intelligence") are inspired. Others -- a subplot involving a wicked aunt (Rachel) and her doomed, retarded nephew (Neibaur) or Saisi's tough ex-Marine Air Force One pilot recalling a comically traumatic incident in Vietnam -- are more like generic improv bits dragged in to flesh out the evening. And, in truth, most of the characters are pretty generic caricatures as well.

But the Fictionistas' expertise in exploiting pulp genres often pays amusing dividends, as when Rachel's eyes widen "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-style as her corporate persona informs the WorldCom workers of their lack of options -- or as Saisi's macho pilot and Killam's worshipful co- pilot transport Neibaur's nervous attache and his vial of synthetic bubonic plague to Kabul to test its potency.

As the walking fish start nipping at suburban heels with their razor-sharp teeth and Scott's now-recovering woman recoils at the news that Republican representatives are calling for stiffer penalties for corporate crime ("It's the end of the world as we know it!"), the actors manage to bring the various themes to a successful conclusion. Saisi's war memory pays off when her macho Marine goes to bed with Killam's improbably demure Vietnamese prostitute. "I'm an American," Saisi proclaims as she straddles Killam's limp body. "This is what we do."