This ‘Affair’ is over

SAN DIEGO -- To call “A Catered Affair,” the new musical drama based on a tired old Paddy Chayefsky teleplay, a period piece would be an understatement. The show, which had its world premiere Sunday at the Old Globe, is an invitation to slip into a time warp -- a rackety Bronx time warp, circa 1953, that’s complete with busybody neighbors in housedresses and kerchiefs who are forever cupping their ears to the kitchen arguments spilling into the tenement courtyard below.

Would somebody please get these yentas on the rotary phone and remind them that it’s not so nice to take pleasure in the melodramatic squabbles of family members doing what they always do in Chayefsky -- figuring out how to love one another without killing each other first.

The book, adapted by Harvey Fierstein, who also plays Winston, the newly conceived gay uncle character, recycles a property whose main appeal is its dated charm. The hoary plot, which some might recall from the 1956 movie remake starring Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds, revolves around a family’s mushrooming wedding plans for Janey (Leslie Kritzer), an independent young woman who’d rather get married at city hall and race off to a California honeymoon than deal with all the hullabaloo.

Idle philosophical question: Should we really be trawling for such mediocre source material without a sharp revitalizing vision? Chayefsky’s expiration date passed long ago, yet Fierstein serves up the saga as though it were fresh milk. But let’s return to the show without further ado -- this is a story line that’s peculiarly vulnerable to being switched off during commercial breaks.

Janey’s mother, Aggie (the marvelous Faith Prince), insists on having a big catered affair. She’s both grief-stricken over the loss of her son, who was recently killed in the Korean War, and guilt-ridden over a daughter she has up to now treated like chopped liver. Plus she needs a break from the daily reminders of just how unromantic her life has been with her cabbie husband, Tom (Tom Wopat), who thinks the money they received for their son’s death should be invested in a taxi medallion and not some elaborate spread for freeloading relatives.

If a musical version of the 1979 comedy “The In-Laws” is running through your head right now, you’re on the wrong track. “A Catered Affair” has some funny bits, but a desire to keep things gritty and real (in a fake 1950s way) stymies any farcical momentum. And with a score by John Bucchino that’s mostly talky recitative, the work often seems like a serious chamber drama more inclined to frown than smile. The exception to this, of course, is when Fierstein takes possession of the stage. Like a gay golem, he terrorizes everyone with his sentimental shtick and sandpapery delivery of songs, which makes him sound as though he just gargled with thumbtacks.

Fierstein, love him or leash him, is a cosmos of his own. And this Broadway-bound production is undeniably mounted with finesse and, at roughly 90 minutes in length, supreme economy by John Doyle, the British director whose daring stagings of “Sweeney Todd” (which comes to the Ahmanson Theatre this spring) and “Company” have jolted us into seeing these classics anew. (His production of “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” last season at the Los Angeles Opera demonstrated the ambitious reach of his boundary-breaking sensibility.) But not even Doyle’s boldness can rescue an idea that’s inherently at cross-purposes with itself.

Does the show want to be stark or saccharine? Brutally honest or comically consoling? Courageously untraditional or only conveniently so?

Hairline cracks in the book are evident at the start. While her parents are away at a Memorial Day service for their son who died three months ago, Janey, rolling around in bed with her boyfriend, Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh), decides it’s finally time for them to tie the knot. Her rationale: “The only thing worse than spending the first part of my life in the shadow of my perfect brother would be spending another day in the shadow of my perfect dead brother.”

No point in getting too worked up if death is a mere plot point. And look at the bright side: The bereavement money will arrive just in time to put down a deposit for the reception hall!

Prince and Wopat imbue their parts with a gravity that would be suitable for a Clifford Odets drama. Yet how can Aggie and Tom’s brand of pungent naturalism compete with the foolish drunken antics of Fierstein’s Winston, who suspects that he hasn’t been invited to the dinner with Janey’s future in-laws because of his “confirmed bachelor uncle” status.

And why is there even the need for such old-fashioned euphemisms, when Winston, who presumably has only a pre-Stonewall sense of entitlement, acts like he’s not just post-”Torch Strong Trilogy” but post-”Will & Grace”?

A great score could sweep all this anarchy and anachronism under the rug. Music in the theater creates its own universal laws, reconciling the irreconcilable and making the implausible seem as natural as air and water. Unfortunately, what Bucchino offers amounts to little more than underscored monologues and dialogues, as the titles “Ralph and Me,” “Our Only Daughter” and “Don’t Ever Stop Saying ‘I Love You’ ” might suggest.

To the composer’s credit, these numbers always advance or flesh out the story -- but at the expense of a memorable, not to say sonorous, existence of their own.

To comment on David Gallo’s impressionistic Bronx set, Brian MacDevitt’s poetic lighting and Zachary Borovay’s sepia-toned projections of urban yesterdays somehow only compounds the sense of talent squandered. It seems perverse that these enviable resources should be put in the service of such a pointless enterprise.

The same can be said for the first-rate cast. Prince, who won a Tony for her performance in the 1992 revival of “Guys and Dolls,” should be encouraged to return to the theater as often as possible. She brings a granulated texture to even her seemingly throwaway gestures as a singer and actor. Her presence almost makes “A Catered Affair” worth seeing, but you’d need to enter with diminished expectations for the show as a whole. That said, Wopat is every bit as good in his less developed part, and Kritzer, though her character’s edginess isn’t adequately established, can be commended for her lack of schmaltz.

The stern lesson to take away, however, is that not every movie can -- or should -- be transformed into a musical. Some, like Chayefsky’s sad-sack dramas, are better left to the wee hours of late-night television, when the flickering images of the past are all we need to distract us from our insomnia.

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‘A Catered Affair’

Where: Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego

When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Nov. 4

Price: $62-79

Contact: (619) 234-5623

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes