Joe Marshall is slowly growing into Phoenix’s gay Woody Allen.

The artistic director of the gay- and lesbian-proud Alternative Theatre Company, Marshall takes a certain joy in constructing simple domestic scenarios, tossing in a few loosely defined characters and watching how stereotypes clash against the mundanity of everyday life, to comic effect.

Late last year saw the staging of his “Benny and the Jets,” about three gay and lesbian couples forced to spend a weekend in a Flagstaff cabin together. Currently, at The Space playhouse in central Phoenix, director Ken Kahle is remounting a piece Marshall wrote some five years ago, “A Night in Vegas.” A collection of scenes all taking place in the same cheap Vegas hotel room, the show doesn’t have the heart of “Benny,” and its comedy is more hit-or-miss — it’s easy to see how Marshall’s writing has grown since then — but the production still has dollops of what makes Marshall’s plays a treat.

The play opens with a scene in which a male escort (played by George Johnson) intrudes upon lovers Ted and Steven (Victor Madrid and Tony Bongo, respectively) and his intrusion goes from, “No one home next door. Mind if I use your phone?” to dragging a dead body into their room.

His excuse? “I didn’t want to be left alone.”

Elsewhere in this “Night in Vegas,” a blind Tom (Skip Schrader) is left by his lover in a room with a deaf man (Maurice Blalack) whose covert bathroom smoking starts a fire. And a blasé husband (Schrader again, a fine actor) deals with his frantic wife (Teresa Ybarra) as they are about to attend their gay son’s wedding. Ybarra, in a robe, curlers and cotton balls between her toes, is a showstopper here as wife and mother, with scornful poison-tipped glares to her hubby and a pity-me chin quiver.

Marshall is less successful when his play veers into drama. He avoids the easy gay gags of “Will & Grace” in his funny moments, but his dramatic voice can take the tone of an after school special. You know, only gay. Thankfully it’s not long before he’s back on a comedy jag.

Then again, maybe the playwright’s dramatic voice has improved; his next piece is September’s “The Player,” a drama about New York’s gay underground. He’s calling it his “darkest play yet.” But nevertheless no worries, ’cause after that, he’s doing a one-man comedy show called “Exposed! True Stories from Phoenix,” followed by his first musical comedy, the full-nudity “Can Naked Boys Really Sing?” Its subtitle is “Who Cares as Long as They’re Naked.”

Take that, Woody