STAGE REVIEW : ‘Up in Saratoga’--A Good Idea Gone Wrong

It’s amazing what can happen to good ideas on their way to the stage.

It seemed like a good idea to take an old farce with a solid track record (Bronson Howard’s 1870 “Saratoga”), dust it off and rewrite it for a modern audience with a new title: “Up in Saratoga.”

It seemed like a good idea to have playwright farceur Terrence McNally (“The Ritz,” “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”) deliver the reconstructed script.

It seemed like a great idea to have Jack O’Brien, a man who could direct the phone book con brio , stage it. But the results at the Old Globe, where “Up in Saratoga” opened Thursday, prove only, again, that there are no guarantees.

The play is a mess.

Every ingredient known to Georges Feydeau, Neil Simon and Michael Frayn has been thrown into this stew. It is framed--literally--in a sumptuous, gilt-edged set by Douglas W. Schmidt, draped in the swirling or dapper elegance of Robert Wojewodski’s costumes, anointed with light by David F. Segal, punctuated with songs by composer Bob James, sprinkled with Scott Joplin and other period music, primped, powdered, propped up and ordered to live. To no avail.

This saga of a young man whose helpless romanticism makes him fall in love with every lovely in his path (and to become engaged to several at once), unfolds with the predictable and unpredictable intrigue and imbroglio one might expect. The plot is as twisted as a telephone cord and in this McNally incarnation, it’s like pushing rocks uphill.

For the first two acts this extravaganza is all period posturing and exposition and asides to the audience and carefully timed exits and entrances. But something’s missing from the start. There’s flavor, but no leavening. The confection won’t rise. Characters twitter, bluster, mince, scheme, sashay, simper and sigh, but it all feels like work.

Scene changing interludes in Act II between a maid (Vicki Lewis) and a butler (Sterling Macer) wither from terminal cuteness. The James songs, delivered as Olio numbers and sung in a nasal whine by Lewis, seem extraneous.

By Act III, particularly the final scene of Act III peppered with gunshots, screaming women and slamming doors, the mayhem has become so forced, the effort to make us laugh so driven and at such a fever pitch, that an audience can only sit back limp, assaulted, amazed and unamused.

A program note from the director tells us that despite the play’s derivation, every word is McNally’s. It’s an assertion we don’t doubt, since “Up in Saratoga” is riddled with intentional anachronisms (“I’ve heard of male bonding, but this is ridiculous”) and contemporary buzzwords (“Tsawright?”--”Tsawright”). Paraphrased song titles become lines of dialogue (“You’ve got it bad and that’s not good”). That sort of indulgence dates and dooms a text.

The ultimate in-joke drew a hiss of consternation opening night, as the young hero claims to have tickets to “Bronson Howard’s new play, ‘Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.’ ” It’s downhill from there, hitting a nadir at “Lie down with actresses wake up with fleas.”

What’s an actor to do? The poor ones here work relentlessly, huffing and puffing their little hearts out trying to entertain us.

The young men are brash and engaging (Jon Tenney is the hapless Romeo, William Duff-Griffin his buddy and cohort), the young women are lissome and lively (Finn Carter, Lauren Mitchell, Marietta DePrima and Mary-Louise Parker). Jack Fletcher accomplishes the remarkable feat of playing a fey buffoon without surrendering a shred of dignity. Mitchell Edmonds, Dorothy Constantine, Laurence Guittard, Richard Kneeland offer better than competent support, but they can’t rise above the play.

Somewhere along the line, McNally and O’Brien, working together, lost sight of the ultimate goal. The lavish Old Globe production gilds a counterfeit lily.

A lot of high energy, bucks and hopes have gone into this monster, but its chances of being salvageable are slim. It’s all style over content. What should have been wit and daring is replaced by trivial pursuit, clarity by confusion.

Farce may spring from muddle, but just as stage boredom can’t be allowed to be boring, stage confusion needs to be clear.

“Up in Saratoga’s” situations are so mixed up that it’s a night’s work to keep track of them. Nothing organically funny emerges from this labyrinth of events.

Instead, we’re given a frenzied three-hour-plus white elephant from which we come out numb, humming the sets and costumes.

At the Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts in Balboa Park, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m. (March 29-30, April 11, 7 p.m.); Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees Saturdays, Sundays at 2. Ends April 16. Tickets: $16-$25; (619) 239-2255).