Let this be said for "Radiant Baby": You get a lot of bang for your buck. The superlative projections by Batwin + Robin Productions, Emilio Sosa's terrific costumes, Howell Binkley's lighting -- each of these would stand out in a full-scale Broadway musical, let alone a three-week Off-Broadway run. If only they were used in the service of an engaging score and book, "Radiant Baby" would be the dazzler of the season.
Beyond the physical production and an intriguing central performance by Daniel Reichard, though, there is little to recommend this frenetic, muddled take on the life of graffito-turned-art icon Keith Haring. The show is filled with underdeveloped characters, leaden gags, and a litany of pleased-with-themselves pop-culture references.
Director George C. Wolfe brings his usual cinematic flair to the proceedings. Still, he and book writer Stuart Ross must share the blame for some of the show's many missteps, most egregiously a device in which three cute kids "draw" Haring into various scenarios. Composer Debra Barsha rarely pushes the narrative forward, but does show a flair for recreating the disco and burgeoning hip-hop sounds of the early 1980s (even if these numbers do have a habit of stopping the show cold).
With his reedy frame and clenched energy, Reichard is ideally cast as Haring; the fact that the artist never becomes particularly sympathetic has far more to do with Reichard's material than with his performance. The vocal dynamo Billy Porter is shown to good advantage in a few disco sequences, but the talented Kate Jennings Grant (as Haring's long-suffering assistant) is wasted with a handful of "it's-hard-working-for-Keith" songs. Her character, like so many other components of "Radiant Baby," takes a distant second to the whiz-bang effects that increasingly look like smoke and mirrors.