I have actually met a few heterosexual men who know more about putting the right color swatches together than about the Oakland Raiders and the nickel defense. The conventional wisdom is that, while these guys are usually okay in the hormone department, their "feminine sides" have been overdeveloped. Now, Paul Stroili has taken the idea of the gay sensibility, cruelly buried in the body of a man who lusts for women, and turned it into a rumination on sexual differences. His very funny one-man show, now at the Tamarind Theater, is called Straight Up with a Twist.

Stroili is a tall, strapping fellow who can switch characters like hats. When he introduces himself, he's a kind of Tony Robbins lecturer, his index fingers raised in teacherly fashion as he gives us a pep talk about living with the geek affliction. There have always been men who were taunted because they were good at interior decorating and domestic skills. ("How about Jesus with the loaves and the fishes? Now there's an example of think-on-your-feet party planning.") It's time to celebrate those skills, he says, in a human-potentialist fashion. Then he launches into a series of biographical sketches, introducing us to the oddball members of his family.

Stroili is a good physical comedian, having his mother light her cigarette with just the right touch of self-absorption, or his waiter father pace the floor with the restlessness of a busboy trolling for plates. But Stroili moves a step or two higher than that with his verbal humor. Coming on to a girl, the young Paul blows it when he says, "Your neck is really nice. Do you like Modigliani?" Later, Paul warns a friend, "Don't call me at home during Monday Night Football. That's when I vacuum."