The best thing about Salt Lake Acting Company's annual "Saturday's Voyeur" is the really funny choreography, which suggests the annual satirical franchise needs to be reinvented.

Some version of that question arises every year about the theater company's 31 years-old-and-counting cash cow, an only-in-Utah musical sendup of local culture. On one hand, the high-priced tickets ($39-$54) support a season of mostly unknown contemporary plays, particularly important in an economic downturn while the company is in the midst of reinventing itself and hiring a new artistic director. On the other hand, most Utahns can experience cultural sniping for free.

The challenge for this year's two-headed review -- by Tribune arts editor Weist and freelance theater reviewer Bannon -- is to argue the question of whether cause-oriented, but tired, satire is worth arts lovers' time and money.

WEIST » Overall, this year's "Voyeur" seems aimed at regulars, marked by tired cultural jokes and flat writing, with cast standouts not getting enough to do. The jokes simply didn't land on opening night.

BANNON » Last year I ended my review with "more sharply shaped zingers and less mean-spirited sniping make this one of the best 'Voyeurs' ever." This year it seemed that balance shifted: there was too much mean-spirited sniping and not enough zingers. "Voyeur" is best with a variety-show format but the focus on the not-funny Freebe family from Utah Valley bogged things down. Even though contemporary political views were lampooned there, they got lost, and the effect was schizophrenic.

WEIST » I agree with you about schizophrenic, not about the variety-show format. "Voyeur" is best when the writers have something to say and it's funny. At least the radio-show format sparked the high-energy singing trio, the Lolly Poppers (Kelsie Jepsen, Shanna Jones, and Arika Schockmel), whose harmonies consistently delivered, especially on the timely, "On a Red Day," ("On a clear day, you can see Tooele"). Other highlights?

BANNON » I liked the KSL radio alerts, especially the "psychological advisory" for Utah counties: you're not suffering from a depression; it's repression; get a life.

I always learn things from "Voyeur," for instance, that Utah Valley has the largest water use and classroom size in America and Utah is No. 1 for hits on Internet porn sites. One of the best numbers this year is "Addicted to Porn," where the tap dancing elders (Alexis Baigue and Jacob Johnson) and Darryl Freebe (Jesse Pepe) bewail their Internet obsession. This cleverly segues into wanting to be in former Brigham Young University student Chad Hardy's missionary beefcake calendar, leading to the clever "Missionary Angel," with the chorus: "Elder is the centerfold."

WEIST » I wanted to retire the gay missionary jokes years ago, but this year they actually felt relevant, with the notion of a homo missionary sleeper cell -- in Sugar House, no less.

It sounds like we're raving here. My bottom-line is that the Freebe family story (anchored in a take-off of the Brady Bunch song) prompted a lot of dated, irrelevant stuff that SLAC (and other local humorists) have beaten to death. The Mormon-bashing quota was high because it didn't feel fresh, while there wasn't a lot -- if any -- equal-opportunity bashing of liberal/progressives, who can be just as over-the-top in Utah.

BANNON » I didn't think the Amish massage stuff blended into the show particularly well. The second part of "Jesus Goes to Lehi" is clever, but the Monty Python over-layer in the first part made it really muddy and confusing.

WEIST » I declare: Let's ban bad Monty Python take-offs.

BANNON » No matter what you think of the material, "Voyeur" is always professional and stylish. Cynthia Fleming's choreography gets better each year, while the show is too long, but John Caywood's direction compensates by keeping things moving briskly. And Brenda Van Der Wiel's costumes are an asset, while Keven Mathie's musical direction is sharp.

Although the joke gets overworked, the idea of the show's sponsor, Celestialis -- "for a four-hour erection in this life and the next" -- is funny., and produces one of the mostoutrageous lines: "What do you do with a four-hour erection? Hang a Utah state flag on it when the Legislature is in session."

WEIST » Material aside? You're kidding. Perhaps SLAC is waving its own flag, as well. "Fresh ideas needed."