ScheckOnTheater

At the rate the Transport Group is going, there won’t be any loft spaces left in Manhattan. The enterprising theater company, who staged a well-received revival of The Boys in the Band last season in a Chelsea loft apartment, repeats the gimmick with their current revival of Michael John LaChiusa’s musical Hello Again, first presented in 1994 at Lincoln Center.

The gimmick is less successful this time. While Matt Crowley’s gay-themed comedy benefited from the verisimilitude and intimacy of the surroundings, this show based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 play La Ronde seems merely lost in this cavernous Soho space.

Those familiar with the original work, not to mention its infinite adaptations, will recall that it depicts a daisy chain of erotic encounters among a series of sketchily drawn figures. La Chiusa’s time-hopping version is set in different decades of the twentieth century, featuring couplings—both of the homo and hetero variety--between such characters as a Senator (Alan Campbell), a Young Thing (Blake Daniel), a Writer (Jonathan Hammond), an Actress (Rachel Bay Jones), a Whore (Nikka Graff Lanzarone), a College Boy (Robert Lenzi), a Young Wife (Alexandra Silber), a Nurse (Elizabeth Stanley), a Husband (Bob Stillman) and a Soldier (Max von Essen).

That these sexual encounters are largely joyless and fraught with tension comes as no surprise. What is surprising is that the same lingering negative aftereffects are experienced by the audience members of this voyeuristic production directed by Jack Cummings III, which brings the action uncomfortably close to the spectators who are seated at supper club-style tables surrounding a large bed.

The performers perform their sexually charged duets at various locales throughout the large space, sometimes climbing on top of tables and writhing their often partially clad, inevitably toned bodies right in our faces. The results are mainly discomfiting, although if you’re looking for a close-up view of nude male buttocks pumping away—the men are more frequently unclothed than the women—then this is the show for you.

The talented ensemble--while not exactly comparable to the original ensemble which included such rising stars as Donna Murphy, John Cameron Mitchell, Michele Pawk, Carolee Carmelo and Malcom Gets, among others—do fine by the material. And LaChiusa’s varied score, ably performed by a six-piece band tucked away in one corner of the room, still has its pleasures, although it offers no truly memorable songs.

But the show, much like the frenetic but joyless sexual liaisons it depicts, feels ultimately hollow. With Schnitzler’s ingenious concept having been made overly familiar by repetition, it may be time for theater artists to resist any further impulses to update this work.

Transport Group, 52 Mercer St. 212-564-0333. www.transportgroup.org.

Middle age has done little to dim the energy of John Leguizamo, who begins his latest solo show Ghetto Klown by frenziedly dancing to James Brown’s “Sex Machine.” This entertaining autobiographical piece by the actor/writer--following in the heels of such acclaimed works as Mambo Mouth, Spic-O-Rama, Freak and Sexaholix…a Love Story—is bound to appeal to his fans, even if its slight content reveals that he’s mined his life story perhaps once too often.

Unlike the familial and social themes explored in his previous pieces, this effort concentrates on the details of Leguizamo’s show business career. It resembles a live version of the sort of freewheeling, dishy autobiographies that movie stars inevitably produce at one point.

While the star claims it to be both a “cautionary tale” and an exercise in “free therapy,” the evening hardly proves revelatory, unless you count descriptions of being manhandled by Steven Seagal or getting stoned with Kurt Russell as being particularly scandalous.

Performing on a tenement-styled set complete with fire escape that could serve for a scaled-down revival of West Side Story, the performer begins his tale with a recounting of his family’s immigrating from Columbia and his subsequent upbringing in Queens, NYC. He even accompanies his description of his teen years with projections of embarrassing photos from his high school yearbook.

But he mainly talks about his acting career, from his early days performing at such Off-Off Broadway venues as P.S. 122 to his acclaimed solo shows on Broadway to his roles in such films as Carlito’s Way, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

Both freely self-reflective and self-effacing, he describes such less felicitous episodes such as his father’s displeasure in the way in which he is depicted by his son on stage and subsequent threats of legal action; his early typecasting as criminals and drug dealers in such television shows as Miami Vice; and his ill-fated foray into variety television with the short-lived House of Buggin’.

 Leguizamo brings much energy to the proceedings, which is filled with funny one-liners and hilarious impressions of such co-stars as Al Pacino. But the overlong evening begins to wear thin over the course of its two-and-a-half hours. When he goes on at length about his arduous pursuit of the woman he would later marry and then proudly displays pictures of their adorable babies, it’s like running into an old classmate at a high school reunion from whom you can’t wait to tear yourself away.

Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. www.telecharge.com.   

There have been reports about Priscilla Queen of the Desert having been made more family-friendly for Broadway. But it’s hard to imagine that this musical, arriving here after successful runs in Australia and London, could have been any bawdier. For all its undeniably entertaining aspects, the overall experience is akin to spending two-and-a-half hours watching floats in the Gay Pride Parade pass by.

 Based on the successful 1994 movie written and directed by Stephan Elliott—he’s also co-authored the book with Allan Scott--the show concerns three drag queen entertainers traveling across the Australian outback on their ramshackle titular bus for a casino gig. It’s also an emotional journey for one of them, Tick (Will Swenson), who will be meeting his young son—he’s secretly married--for the first time.

The trio, which also includes the muscular, extremely flexible Adam (Nick Adams) and the older, transsexual Bernadette (Tony Sheldon), experience a series of adventures along the way, including violent interactions with unfriendly townspeople and Bernadette finding romance with Bob (C. David Johnson), a macho mechanic who impulsively decides to come along for the ride.

The show immediately establishes its stylistic aspirations with its elaborate opening sequence featuring a trio of drag queen divas descending from the heavens while belting out “It’s Raining Men.” The juke box score-- delivered both as lip-synched production numbers and characters songs-- consists of vintage, mainly disco-style standards from the ‘70s and ‘80s, including “I Love the Nightlife,” “I Will Survive,” “Boogie Wonderland,” “Shake Your Groove Thing” and Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” among many others. Not surprisingly, songs by Madonna are prominently featured.

The show’s vulgar, in-your-face humor is partially alleviated by some heartwarming elements, such as Tick’s anxious meeting with his young son and the tender relationship that develops between Bernadette and her unlikely suitor.    

But the evening’s real raison d’etre is the series of lavish production numbers featuring a relentless array of outrageous costumes designed by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardner, who won Oscars for their contributions to the film. (You may recall that the latter wore a dress to the ceremony made entirely out of American Express Gold credit cards.)

Your level of enjoyment will directly depend on your appreciation for the highest level of camp. For me, a little went a long way, with the proceedings eventually proving more wearisome than fun.

Still, there’s no denying the expertly executed aspects of the production, which has apparently been tightened and refined since its previous incarnations. Directed by Simon Phillips, with Broadway             veteran Jerry Mitchell credited as “production supervisor,” the evening moves along with the brisk efficiency of a DJ spinning records at a dance party.

The performers are all first rate, with Swenson quite moving as the conflicted Tick and Adams displaying his impressive physicality with joyous abandon. But the real standout is Sheldon, who has been with the show since it began and who nails every bitchy wisecrack with the precision of a veteran stand-up comic.      

Palace Theatre, 1564 Broadway. 877-250-2929. www.ticketmaster.com. 

Watching Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is bound to make you feel smarter.

This 1993 play, a career highlight for the playwright, is a complex interweaving of past and present, of intellect and emotion, of science, history and art. It’s a dense, challenging work, but also an infinitely entertaining one that offers vast rewards.

Its classical elegance is well displayed in the sterling new Broadway revival that was previously seen in London’s West End a couple of seasons back.

Set in a stately home in Derbyshire, the play’s action alternates between 1809 and the present day. In the scenes set in the 19th century, the characters are striving to make scientific advances, while in the ones set in the present they are looking to uncover the secrets of the past.

We are thus privy to extended conversations about such topics as landscape gardening, Fermat’s Last Theorem and the intricacies of Newtonian physics and chaos theory.

If it all sounds dauntingly challenging, then you underestimate the playwright’s gift for rendering intellectual concepts in wonderfully entertaining fashion.

It certainly helps that the play contains some of Stoppard’s most colorful and memorable characters, including Thomasina Coverly (Bel Powley), a teenage math prodigy; Septimus Hodge (Tom Riley), her dreamboat tutor; Hannah Jarvis (Lia Williams), a no-nonsense academic researcher; and Bernard Nightingale (Billy Crudup), a hilariously enthusiastic historian who is determined to prove his theory that Lord Byron, who briefly stayed in the house in 1809, fled the country after killing a rival poet in a duel over an adulterous affair.

Director David Leveaux has provided a production that is simultaneously stately and breezy, one that conveys both the poetic poignancy and playful humor of the work. He’s also assembled a terrific ensemble, including three holdovers from the London production--Powley (who has an unfortunate tendency to swallow her words), Riley and Williams.

Crudup is endlessly amusing as the historian; Raul Esparza is terrifically droll as the family scion with a particular fondness for both mathematics and his pet turtle; and Grace Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter, demonstrates that she’s inherited both her mother’s stunning beauty and talent. The cast is further rounded out by such reliable theater veterans as Margaret Colin and Bryon Jennings in smaller roles.

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.

If the backstory of The Wizard of Oz can be turned into the theatrical juggernaut that is Wicked, then why not apply the same treatment to Peter Pan?

That at, at least, must have been the thinking behind Peter and the Starcatcher, based on Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s best-selling 2004 children’s book. It’s clearly attracted a host of big names, starting with Disney Theatrical Productions, which commissioned it, and continuing with writer Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, The Addams Family) and co-directors Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, the latter fresh from Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and The Pee-Wee Herman Show.

The results on display at the New York Theatre Workshop are something of a mixed bag. Staged with imagination and ingenuity and wonderfully acted by the ensemble, the piece seems rather too sophisticated for children and too juvenile for adults.

Staged in a style reminiscent of English pantomime and story theater (co-director Rees is no stranger to the latter, having starred in Nicholas Nickleby), it tells the story of the young Peter (Adam Chanler-Berat) and his fellow band of London orphans who are enslaved on a remote island.

 Among the figures Peter encounters on his adventures are bizarre mermaids; an English lord (Karl Kenzler) and his plucky teenage daughter (Celia Keenan-Bolger), the guardians, or “starcatchers,” of a magical substance that can be used for both good and evil; and the villainous Black Stache (Christian Borle), who would later be better known as Captain Hook.

Elice’s overly jokey script is filled with meta-theatrical touches, comic asides to the audience, and such anachronistic one-liners as “he’s more elusive than a melody in a Philip Glass opera.”

The results are as much wearisome as fun, although the sheer vigor of the staging provides some compensation. Adding greatly to the show’s effect are the terrific performances, especially Borle’s wonderfully tongue-in-cheek turn as the moustache twirling villain, and the consistent inventiveness of Donyale Werle’s malleable sets.

Although there is fairly constant musical accompaniment provided by an onstage pianist and percussionist, there is only a smattering of actual songs. They are the most entertaining moments in the show, suggesting that a full-blown musical treatment might have been a better way to go.

New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. 212-279-4200. www.ticketcentral.com.