Chee-Chee may sound like part of a soundtrack of Irven DeVore's latest researches into primate behavior, but is actually someone's transliteration of the title of a play by the great Italian playwright Lujgi Pirandello. Pirandello is best known for his somewhat stagey plays Henry IV, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Right You Are [If You Think You Are], which pretty much made reality vs. appearance the central obsession of modern theater. Chee-Chee is austere (it lasts only a half hour) but full of depth. This is the kind of play--rarely performed pieces by important authors--that the Loeb Ex was meant for, and the production does everyone justice. At the Ex this Friday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

The Laughing Stock has its headquarters in The Grotto at 96 Winthrop St. (in the Square) and intends to be a sort of political cabaret. It's scripted by the same man who invented Boston's once-again longest-running production, The Proposition, but unlike that earlier show, it's not improvisational. At the moment, it features such obvious but important topics as America's ostensible government at Washington, the largesse of Nelson Rockefeller and, coyly, "Kissinger's Secret," which, if you don't already know what it is, is revealed on Tues. - Thurs. at 8, Fri. at 7:30 and 9:30, Sat. at 8 and 10, and Sunday at 8.

Tall Kings and Short Subjects will probably not, as was mistakenly said last week in this column, "stretch the limits of mind" unless you are a three-year-old. But it does stretch the limits of mime, and if that interests you, check out the Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St. in Boston, Thurs. - Fri. at 8:30, Sat. at 7:15 and 9:30.