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The group Culture Clash consists of three 40-ish male Latino performers who write and perform political sketch comedy. They did their first gig nearly 18 years ago in a San Francisco Mission District gallery that sponsored political work. 

Since then, a successful career has taken them to many prominent theaters around the country. In 1991, they created 30 episodes of a half-hour television series for Fox called “Culture Clash.” 

In 1990, Berkeley Repertory Theater commissioned from Culture Clash “The Yo, Frankie! Show,” a satire about commercial television that toured schools in Northern California. Three years ago, the group returned to the Rep with a bizarre adaptation of Aristophanes’ “The Birds.” 

And now, as of last Wednesday, they’re back, opening a third Berkeley Rep engagement “Culture Clash in America.” 

“Culture Clash in America” takes material from earlier gigs and combines it with new material—some of it about Berkeley — creating a 90-minute show the group sees as a retrospective of its work in political comedy. 

Performed by Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza – and directed by Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone – “Culture Clash in America,” is a somewhat uneven evening of short playlets, monologues and lots of sociological and political observation. Generally it gets better as the show progresses. 

The three members of Culture Clash go out into the world and find interesting and eccentric people and interview them, and then develop sketches around these short oral histories. Much of the material in "Culture Clash in America" is taken from such interviews, creating a potpourri of personalities and issues in the American landscape. 

Highlights include the portrayal of an elderly Jewish resident of Miami, a theater publicist turned public relations guy of some kind. His salty, four-letter-laced speech is sort of an oral history of 50 years of Miami show biz and ethnic history. 

Later there is a short and very funny segment featuring an Asian homeboy from San Diego, fluent in Black-inflected ghetto-speak, followed by a hilarious, inane segment featuring three stoned surfers. 

There are many drag segments. One of the evening’s most interesting features a transsexual health educator from the Mission telling taboo secrets of homosexuality and bisexuality in the Latino community. She describes in graphic detail the archeology of her upcoming male-to-female genital surgery. 

Elsewhere, two female boomer hippies smoke a joint, drink Chilean wine from Trader Joes, and spoof the Berkeley pot-head lifestyle. 

` Other segments are less effective. The evening goes up and down. Some of the biggest laughs are the obscenity words. There are lots of jokes about race. The show definitely took a while to get going opening night. 

Certain segments built on Latin ghetto street humor didn’t catch fire for the opening night audience. At those times it seemed like Culture Clash was playing to the wrong crowd. 

Some of the bits (such as street life on the lower east side of New York) felt old and familiar and lacked an edge. The newer segments were fresher and better. One segment about prison inmates blaming the system needed something more than rage. 

"Culture Clash in America" ends with two segments about Berkeley. In one, Shirley Dean makes her pitch for the new Berkeley with its nice restaurants and "hundreds of hate-free zones." 

Then a mysterious, wheelchair-bound vet living in People’s Park smokes a joint and reveals, somewhat mystically, the best Chicano poem ever written. So the evening ends, true to its theme, with culture clash in America. 

Planet theater reviewer John Angell Grant has written for "American Theatre," "Backstage West," "Callboard," and many other publications. E-mail him at jagplays@yahoo.com. 

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