Photo by Patrick T. FallonTamarie Cooper wants the world to know she loves America. She’s delivering an unabashed, but not uncritical, valentine with her new show, The United States of Tamarie, An All-American Revue (made in China). The Catastrophic Theatre production opens tonight at DiverseWorks.

“The first number is America Is Awesome,” Cooper says. “We play with certain stock figures. I’m the optimistic, patriotic person seeing the good things — or trying to. Walt Zipprian plays the antagonist, as he has in several of my past shows. He’s the radical leftist guy down on everything.”

That cues the second number, America Is Terrible.

Cooper’s distinctively wacky, original summer musicals have become something of a Houston institution since the first one tickled audiences in 1996.

Seven months pregnant when she opened her 2009 production, Journey to the Center of My Brain, she took last year off to spend time with her infant daughter, Rose, and husband, Zach Elkins. That may have been great for her family life — but Cooper’s fans were bereft of their annual dose of the comic actress some have described as the Lucille Ball of Bayou City.

“I had worked in theater steadily for 15 years, so it was nice to step back for a while,” she says. Beyond her personalized romps, Cooper’s considerable credits range from starring in Euripides’ Medea and Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, to directing Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

“At first, I worried that I’d go to see the company’s shows and be thinking, ‘I should be playing that part.’ But that didn’t happen, and I was able to get involved in smaller ways from time to time, providing musical staging for a couple of Catastrophic’s shows.

“Mainly, I’ve been lost in Mommyland and really loving it. I have to say my greatest production is Baby Rose.”

Cooper is wearing her customary multiple hats for the latest edition. She conceived, directed, choreographed and stars in the show. She wrote the script with her longtime collaborator Patrick Reynolds. The songs are by Cooper, Reynolds and three other Catastrophic artists.

“I’m glad to be back in the swing and will certainly commit to one big show a year — though whether that will always be ‘my show’ or not, I’m not sure. It’s great being back with so many people I’ve worked with for years; we’ve always thought of these shows as summer camp for adults. And we’ve got a lot of great new people in this year’s show, too.”

Because most of her creations have had an autobiographical aspect, however fanciful, Cooper says some friends expected her “comeback” to deal with her adjustment to motherhood.

“There are a few references, of course,” she says. “But I wanted this to be about something bigger. One day, while I was sitting rocking Rose, I began wondering about her future, what it will be like for her when she grows up. That’s where the idea came from for a show about America and where we’re going.”

The show’s “unflinching look at the inherent absurdity of our modern national identity” — that’s the publicity description — spans from protest culture to nostalgic Americana, from patriotic machismo to conspiracy theories and political gridlock.

“This year’s script is one of the strongest we’ve had,” she says, “It’s more political than past shows, more sassy and subversive. One sequence is about other nations’ opinions of America, so we have an entire stage of actors playing different countries. There’s also a big Texas number, called Born-Again Texans. The show makes fun of everyone, so I think everybody can find some way to laugh at themselves.”

For all its laughs at the potholes of American culture, the show reaches a conclusion as flag-waving as a George M. Cohan finale — as Cooper indicates by sharing a few lines of her closing number, Tamarie’s American Anthem:

“It’s real and it’s fiction,
It’s a great contradiction.
It’s blessed and it’s cursed,
It’s the best and the worst.
There’s no place I’d rather be.”

Spoken like a true patriot.

THE UNITED STATES OF TAMARIE
Opens Friday; 8 p.m.
Wednesdays-Saturdays through Aug. 15
DiverseWorks
1117 East Freeway
Pay what you can
713-522-2723