ScheckOnTheater

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.  

If you’re going to revive an old-fashioned chestnut of a romantic comedy like Abe Burrows’ Cactus Flower, the least you can do is deliver a staging with some sparks. They are sadly lacking in the Off-Broadway revival currently on view at the Westside Theatre, which resembles a summer stock production, only without the usual B-level stars.

Instead, the producers have cast the decidedly unfunny Maxwell Caulfield in the lead role of Julian, the womanizing middle-aged dentist who pretends to be married in order to keep his younger girlfriend’s romantic aspirations at bay. The cast also includes soap opera veteran Lois Robbins as the motherly receptionist who harbors a not-so-secret yen for her boss and young Jenni Barber as the frustrated girlfriend. Suffice it to say that none of them manages to erase the memories of Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and the Oscar-winning Goldie Hawn in the 1969 film version, which itself was no classic.

Burrows adapted his play from a vintage French comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. The storyline has indeed proved durable, as it also served as the basis for the recent Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston film Just Go With It.

With snappy direction and inspired performers, the play might still prove diverting fun, especially for the matinee lady crowd. But director Michael Bush’s leaden production produces nary a single laugh over the course of its overlong two-and-a-half hours.  

Caulfield displays no comic chops whatsoever—he can’t even pull off the called-for double take when Julian spots his receptionist sporting the mink stole that he had given to his girlfriend. Robbins is suitably stuffy in the play’s first half, but is less convincing when required to convey her character’s transformation into giddy sexuality. And Barber, while appealing, is so similar in looks and style to Hawn that the results are merely distracting.

Add to that a supporting cast who ham it unmercifully in the smaller roles and an awkward, heavily wood-paneled set that fails to suggest the required multiple locations. The results feel like cheap champagne that has long lost its fizz. 

Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com

After two movie adaptations and an Off-Broadway production a decade ago, there would seem to be no compelling reason to revive Jason Miller’s That Championship Season. But, ah yes, there is, as this old-fashioned drama provides a perfect opportunity for the sort of limited engagement star casting that has become a winning recipe for Broadway success.

The good news is that the star-studded ensemble does very well by their by now familiar characters. The bad news is that this 1972 Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama--about the reunion of former high school basketball players celebrating the 20th anniversary of their biggest victory-- hasn’t aged particularly well.

Gregory Mosher, who staged a revelatory revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge last season, has failed to work similar magic here. But he has assembled a terrific cast that has already proven catnip at the box-office.

It includes Brian Cox as the coach who none too subtly reveals his racism; Jason Patric as the alcoholic Tom; Jim Gaffigan as George, the small-town mayor struggling for re-election; Chris Noth as Phil, the successful businessman whose support George desperately needs; and Kiefer Sutherland as James, the frustrated junior high principal who hopes to improve his lot in life by successfully managing George’s campaign.

The play follows a fairly predictable template. As the evening wears on and the characters become increasingly drunk, secrets and betrayals rise to the surface, with dramatic revelations and violent confrontations arriving on a fairly constant basis.  

Nearly forty years after its premiere, it feels stodgy and predictable now. But the play still works to some degree, thanks to its frequent doses of acerbic humor and effective tapping into the classic theme of dashed hopes.

It comes as no surprise that theater veteran Cox walks away with the evening with his forceful performance as the coach. On the other hand, who would have guessed that Patric (the playwright’s son, by the way) would display such formidable comic chops with his consistently funny turn, especially after his disappointing work as the similarly boozy Brick in the ill-fated Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Also fine are Gaffigan, perfectly cast as the uncharismatic mayor, and Chris Noth, in familiar territory as the slick and sleazy businessman. Sutherland is less convincing as the milquetoast James, but one has to admire the actor’s desire to play against type and meld into the ensemble rather than exploit the macho persona he honed to perfection over so many seasons of 24.

But all the actors’ efforts are not enough to overcome the mechanistic nature of the play itself, which has entered middle-age no more gracefully than its misbegotten characters.

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.