HAMMING WITH MANN AND PENN

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Aimee Mann's and Michael Penn's "Acoustic Vaudeville" tour was short an appendage when it started out Sunday night at Berklee Performance Center, prompting Penn to allow that it could legitimately be called only "Acoustic."

That's because comic Patton Oswalt, who normally does an opening set and then provides between-song patter for the wife-and-husband team, was delayed by plane difficulties. But Oswalt arrived perhaps 20 minutes later, and what ensued during a three-encore evening easily restored credibility to the name. Among the highlights, both silly and sublime:

Penn singing a couple of lines of "Old Man River" as a parrot.

Mann singing a stanza from Penn's signature "No Myth," as Ethel Merman.

The two of them opening their encore by taking a short spin through "I Got You Babe," a la Sonny and Cher.

Guitarist Buddy Judge, adding a bit of Elvis Costello in "The Other End (of the Telescope)," co-penned by Mann and Costello.

Renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by Judge and Paul Dalen, the tour's manager and sound engineer ("a first," he said). Judge sang his backward; Dalen's disjointed version finished the lyrics one note before the music.

The crowd got into the act, too. At different junctures, Mann and Penn forgot lyrics, and both times, alert audience members immediately tossed up what the songwriters had dropped.

Their eagerness to help may have sprung partly from Mann's: When many of the swells with seats in the first few rows hadn't shown up after the first few songs, she invited the people in the "really crappy seats" to come down front. Delighted, they did.