ScheckOnTheater

If the title of Tony Kushner’s new play premiere puts you off, wait until you actually sit through it. The overlong and overstuffed The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures is typically Kushnerian in its seriousness, intelligence and wide-ranging themes, but this naturalistic drama is not nearly as effective as such works by the playwright as Angels in America or Homebody/Kabul.

Strongly reminiscent of Arthur Miller, the three-act work is mainly set in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a brownstone owned by Gus Marcantonio (Michael Cristofer), an avowed Communist and former longshoreman who has settled into a financially comfortable retirement.

Patriarch Gus has gathered his sister (Brenda Wehle) and grown children together to announce his plans to commit suicide, which he has attempted once before. He’s convinced that he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and is planning on selling his home to ensure financial security for his family.

The widowed Gus’ children, including oldest son Phil (Stephen Spinella), younger son V, short for Victor (Steven Pasquale) and daughter Empty (Linda Emond), are naturally aghast to hear of their father’s plans. Meanwhile, each is coping with various personal issues.

Phil, who has been in a longtime relationship with his African-American partner Paul (K. Todd Freeman), has spent a small fortune on the services of a male hustler (Michael Esper) with whom he is desperately in love. Empty is about to have a child via a surrogate (Molly Price) with her female lover Maeve (Danielle Skraastad) while enjoying the occasional sexual dalliance with her loyal ex-husband Adam (Matt Servitto). And working class V, married to the Asian-American Sooze (Hettienne Park), can barely contain his anger over his father’s decision. 

The densely packed work—the title of which is a riff on writings by George Bernard Shaw and Mary Baker Eddy--offers a surfeit of characters and situations, more than Kushner can comfortably handle. Although it reveals the playwright’s gift for blending sexual, political and social issues with his trademark intelligence and biting humor, too much of the evening is composed of overheated domestic arguments.

These quickly prove tedious, especially in the overlong (3 and 3/4 hours) play’s second act, in which director Michael Greif has the actors loudly shouting while stepping over each other’s lines in a manner akin to the films of Robert Altman.

While some scenes resonate with dramatic power, the attenuated proceedings are mainly indicative of the playwright’s oft-demonstrated propensity for self-indulgence. 

Performing on a beautifully detailed, two-story set designed by Mark Wendland, the ensemble, several of whom are veterans of previous Kushner productions, provide vividly memorable characterizations. Particularly outstanding are Spinella, who brings humor as well as desperation to Phil; Emond, who makes Empty sympathetic despite her selfish behavior; and Cristofer, who brings compelling forcefulness to his turn as the fervently leftist Gus.

Kushner’s undeniable talent is well on display in this ambitious but frustratingly problematic work. But it’s hard not to wish that the playwright had more sharply honed it since its Guthrie Theater premiere two years ago.

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. www.publictheater.org.

Playwright David Ives has clearly had a ball adapting Moliere for his screwball verse comedy The School for Lies, and his enjoyment is infectious. Retaining the basic characters, situations and 17th century setting of The Misanthrope, this comedy being presented by the Classic Stage Company is a textbook example of how to pay homage to the classics while applying a freewheeling, modern sensibility.

In this rendition, Alceste, the titular character of the original, has been cleverly renamed Frank (Hamish Linklater), but otherwise his essential surly temperament and rude propensity for unvarnished truth telling remain the same. Ives has upped the amorous quotient of Moliere’s play, concentrating on the troubled attraction that develops between Frank and Celimene (Mamie Gummer) after each has been misled by their mutual friend Philante (Hoon Lee).

Celimene, facing a vicious lawsuit by the nasty dowager Arsinoe (Alison Fraser), mistakenly believes that Frank will help defend her, while he thinks that the sharp-witted gossiper has fallen madly in love with him.

Competing with Frank for Celimene’s affections are a trio of dimwitted suitors (Rick Holmes, Matthew Maher, Frank Harts), while he is himself pursued by Celimene’s coquettish cousin Eliante (Jenn Gambatese), for whom Philante desperately pines.

The resulting dizzying complications, rendered in rhyming couplets ala Richard Wilbur’s classic translations, are consistently hilarious. Clearly armed with a copious rhyming dictionary, Ives has provided deliciously witty and frequently vulgar dialogue that includes numerous anachronistic touches that are jarringly funny.

“Till then we’ll lick love’s slippery mango,” Frank promises during his passionate wooing. “While locked in our own private, zipless tango!”

Under the expertly fast-paced direction of Walter Bobbie, the ensemble shines. Linklater superbly conveys Frank’s quick-wittedness, making him somehow endearing despite his nastiness; Gummer is enchanting and also hysterically funny in such moments as when Celimene delivers impressions of a Valley Girl and a Jersey goombah; Gambatese and Fraser tear into their broader roles with gusto; and Steven Boyer nearly steals the show with his slow-burn reactions as a servant whose efforts to dispense a tray of canapés are consistently derailed.

Adding to the buoyant fun are the pastel-colored period costumes by William Ivey Long, which somehow manage to be at once gorgeously sumptuous and wildly over-the-top.

Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. 212-352-3101. www.classicstage.org.  

A musical whose themes encompass the Holocaust and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t exactly qualify as a feel good experience. That’s perfectly fine—there’s plenty of room on the boards for serious musicals these days. But the Roundabout’s The People in the Picture squanders its good intentions with its ham-fisted execution, a plethora of cheap jokes, and the sort of Jewish stereotypes (an elderly mother tries to score a handsome doctor for her single daughter, among other things) that may please elderly matinee ladies but few others.

Set in 1977 New York City and Warsaw, Poland from 1935 to 1946, the show, written by Iris Rainer Dart (Beaches) revolves around Raisel, alternately seen as an elderly grandmother and a young Yiddish theater star with the “Warsaw Gang,” a popular troupe in pre-World War II Poland.

 The company’s members are introduced via their being seen within one of the giant antique wooden frames that are the show’s main scenic element. Raisel is determined to acquaint her young granddaughter Jenny (Rachel Reshelf) with these figures from her past, as well as reconnect her with her Jewish roots that have been severed by her mother, Red (Nicole Parker).

The show alternates between past and present as we see Raisel and her fellow actors contending with the increasing brutalization perpetrated by the Nazis and later her struggling with the disease that is sapping her of her mental faculties.

A major plot element, one that explains Red’s disaffection with her mother, revolves around Raisel’s decision to safeguard her young daughter by entrusting them to a Christian couple and then later wrenching the traumatized young girl away from her loving adoptive parents.

But the show’s serious themes are undercut by the jokey book, which includes such gags as the troupe’s diva commenting, “I believe that if one surrounds oneself with the proper hair and make-up people, one need never go to elder care.”

The lyrics, also written by Dart, are even more wince inducing. Consider this sample from “Remember Who You Are,” about the troupe’s director (Christopher Invar) considering an offer to work in Hollywood: “They’ll change your name/Dye your hair/Re-install a foreskin/Remember who you are/When they step in and try to redo you/Remember who you are/’Cause they’re all going to try to unjew you.” 

And the less said about the excerpt from the company’s musical comedy version of The Debunk, the better.

What makes the evening bearable, and sometimes more than that, is the steady anchoring presence of Donna Murphy. The formidable musical theater actress has rarely been better, not only singing gorgeously here but also handling the quicksilver transformations between the younger and older versions of her character with breathtaking facility.

She’s well supported by the rest of the ensemble, including Resheff, previously seen as the young Princess Fiona in Shrek, displaying a precocious talent; Parker, who infuses her less than sympathetic character with real depth; and such pros as Chip Zien, Lewis J. Stadlin, Joyce Van Patten and Alexander Gemignani making strong impressions as members of the Warsaw Gang.

Leonard Foglia’s direction and Andy Blankenbuehler’s musical staging is reasonably adept, even if it too often calls to mind Fiddler on the Roof.

The musical score--written by veteran pop songwriter Mike Stoller (“Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock” and countless other classics with his partner Jerry Leiber) and Artie Butler—boasts few memorable numbers, with the exception of the stirring “We Were Here.”

The People in the Picture is an ambitious and well-meaning show, to be sure. Unfortunately, that only serves to make its many flaws all the more glaring.

Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St. 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org.

It may be a time capsule of a play, but the sterling new Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart reveals that it has lost none of its urgency or power. A semi-fictionalized account of the beginning of the AIDS crisis and the efforts of a group of dedicated activists to spur the city and country into action, this work, first seen in 1985 in a landmark production at the Public Theater, is relentlessly gripping and moving.

This version co-directed by Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe began life as a one-night benefit reading last November. Newly staged with several of its roles recast, it marks a long belated Broadway debut for the work.

The central character, based on the playwright, is Ned Weeks, whose fierceness and oft-expressed hostility soon put him at odds with both the authority figures he was lobbying and his colleagues in the organization (the Gay Men’s Health Crisis) that he co-founded.

Joe Mantello, in his first acting gig since his starring turn nearly two decades ago in the Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, is absolutely superb in the leading role, leading one to hope that this now celebrated director (Wicked and Take Me Out, among many others) will return to performing on a more regular basis.

He’s well supported by a sterling ensemble that includes John Benjamin Hickey, heartbreaking as Ned’s New York Times journalist lover who contracts the disease; Lee Pace, as the more diplomatic co-head of the organization; Jim Parsons (TV’s The Big Bang Theory), sardonically funny as one of its impassioned members, and Ellen Barkin, as the polio-afflicted doctor distraught over the growing number of her patients becoming afflicted. Other roles are well handled by such pros as Patrick Breen, Mark Harelik and Richard Topol.

The urgently written piece borders on being polemical while sacrificing none of its human drama. Among the evening’s highlights are two wrenching monologues: one by Pace in which his character describes in wrenching detail the death of his lover, and another featuring Barkin delivering an increasingly intense, showstopping harangue about the refusal of the government and media to recognize the severity of the epidemic.  

It all proceeds with the urgency of a great political thriller, that like the film All the President’s Men, is completely involving despite the fact that the audience essentially knows what’s going to happen.

Simply staged with a minimum of props, the production features a series of projections depicting the names of actual victims of the disease. As the events of the play--which takes place from 1981 to 1984--progress, the names swell to the point where they cover the entire rear and side walls of the theater.

As they leave the theater, audience members are handed a letter by Kramer in which he strongly argues the case that the plague is far from over and that much more work needs to be done. It’s a comforting reminder that this impassioned activist, now in his mid-seventies, is still fighting the good fight.

Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45thSt. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.

You can’t say that the new musical Baby It’s You! is shy about its intentions. In the opening moments of this show about the mega-selling ‘60s girl group The Shirelles, an image of a jukebox is projected. Clearly this new effort conceived by Floyd Mutrux (Million Dollar Quartet) is aiming to be a jukebox musical competitor to Jersey Boys. Except in this case a more accurate title would be “Jersey Girls.”

Written by Mutrux and Collin Escott, the show is actually less concerned with The Shirelles, who barely emerge as characters here, than in telling the story of Florence Greenberg, the Passaic, New Jersey housewife who became a record mogul and shepherded the group to stardom.

Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone) stars as the driven Greenberg, a pre-feminist era music industry pioneer who discovered the singing group at her daughter’s high school. Much to the consternation of her husband Bernie (Barry Pearl), she embarked on a career that eventually led to her own independent record label, Scepter Records, and a string of hits by the group that included “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Soldier Boy,” “Mama Said” and “Baby It’s You.”

Those songs are dutifully recreated here (with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” a surprising omission). But since the group didn’t have all that many chart-topping singles, the show’s score is augmented by other classics from the era like “Sixteen Candles,” “Shout,” “Louie Louie,” “It’s My Party,” “Duke of Earl” and “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” among many others.

Awkwardly intermingling songs done performance style and in the context of the book—at one point Bernie chides his wife by singing “Yakety Yak”—the show lacks the narrative drive and theatrical pizzazz that has made Jersey Boys such a smash. Most of the drama stems from Greenberg’s interracial affair with Luther Dixon (Allan Louis), the record producer/composer who became her partner in the company.

But it’s still pretty entertaining, thanks to the non-stop assemblage of memorable pop hits that are well performed by the ensemble, which includes Erica Ash, Kyra Da Costa, Christina Sajous and Crystal Starr Knighton as the Shirelles and Geno Henderson impersonating such stars as Chuck Jackson, Ron Isley and Gene Chandler as well as performing narration duties.

Leavel anchors the proceedings with her dynamic performance in the central role, as well as lending her impressive pipes to such numbers as “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Tonight’s the Night.” She also looks terrific in an array of eye-popping outfits courtesy of costume designer Lizz Wolf.

The other performers do mainly well by their sketchily written roles, although some of them come dangerously close to caricature.

Relying heavily on projections of vintage photos evoking the era, the production is little more than serviceable, although it moves briskly along under the direction of Mutrux and Sheldon Epps. The music is really the star here, with Don Sebesky’s arrangements well played by the eight-piece band whose members are located on multiple platforms above the stage.  

Broadhurst Theatre, 235 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.