The Man Who Came to Dinner

First the good news: Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's "The Man Who Came to Dinner" is as sturdy and reliable a laugh-getter as ever, a prime example of the large-cast, well-tooled, mildly satiric mid-20th-century domestic comedy that once graced Broadway several times a season. Now the not-so-good news: It remains this mostly in spite of what leading man Jim Brochu and director Dan Ackerman do to it.

If you saw the 2000 Roundabout revival with Nathan Lane, you'll see the talented Brochu taking a similarly misguided path in his portrayal of Sheridan Whiteside, the Alexander Woollcott–inspired writer and pompous ass who turns a well-to-do Ohio household into a madhouse after he breaks a hip, moves in, and takes over. Woollcott, as you can see from Monty Woolley's portrayal in the 1942 Warner Brothers film version, strove mightily and successfully to cover up his modest roots; he turned himself into a Very Important Person, outwardly cultivated and free of insecurity, with scarcely a trace of his humble beginnings.

Brochu's Whiteside, with a blustery manner and more than a trace of a New York or New Jersey accent, is less supercilious and hence less of a contrast to the middle-class Midwesterners around him. It's an interesting choice, showing the remnants of the underprivileged youth who reinvented himself, but it's not as funny. Further, Brochu mostly wheels his wheelchair downstage and shouts his lines out to the audience, paying scant attention to those around him. Consequently, we don't always know how Whiteside feels about what he's saying, and the impact of his eventual transformation into a goodhearted old softie is diminished.

Shouting and blustering is the general order of the day under Wackerman's busy direction. So many eccentrics cross the stage that the quieter characters become the ones you look forward to seeing: Amy Landon's sensible secretary, Thursday Farrar and Reggie Whitehead's dutiful domestics, and Jay Stratton's nice-guy newspaperman are islands of sanity amid Kaufman and Hart's bizarre assemblage.

A few of the bizarros do strike plangent notes: John Windsor-Cunningham's Beverly Carlton, cleverly modeled on Noel Coward, is elegant and amusing, and Joseph R. Sicari's Banjo, an unholy amalgam of Jimmy Durante and Harpo Marx, all but walks off with the third act with his boisterous clowning. Cady Huffman's Lorraine Sheldon, a spoiled celebrity (Katharine Cornell? Joan Crawford?) enlisted by Whiteside to help preserve his status quo, is stylish but a bit too broad.

All cavort merrily on a lavish set by Harry Feiner that's mighty impressive for Off-Broadway, with several art-deco pieces I wouldn't mind taking off their hands when the thing closes, and Amy Pedigo-Otto's costume design is a fashion show of late-'30s finery worthy of Adrian. Kaufman and Hart's expert engineering still works, and if you've never seen "The Man Who Came to Dinner," this isn't a bad production to introduce you to it. But if you have, it's likely to disappoint.
 
Presented by the Peccadillo Theater Company at the Theatre at St. Clement's, 423 W. 46th St., NYC. Dec. 4–18. Wed., 7 p.m.; Thu. and Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.thepeccadillo.com. Casting by Michael Cassara.