STAGE REVIEW : Premise Fractured in ‘Breaking Legs’

Yo, Frankie. Tom Dulack’s “Breaking Legs” at the Old Globe Theatre is about America’s favorite crime family, the Mafia. What would happen if Uncle Tino and Uncle Mike decided to back a Broadway play?

First they would change the title to something you can hum, like “The Student Prince.” Then they’d write in a part for their fat niece who plays the accordion. Then they would sit the playwright down for a little family conference about the second act. “It needs work.”

Funny, right? It’s also amusing that our meek playwright (Greg Mullavey) has never even attended a wake, although his play concerns a murder. His Mafia pals are scandalized. You’ve never been to a wake, and you’re Irish? “My family wasn’t very ethnic.”

Uncle Tino (Richard Kneeland) and Uncle Mike (Mike Genovese) are of course very ethnic, even to the extent of rubbing out Uncle Frankie (Eddie Zammit) just before intermission and ordering his widow the best funeral that money can buy. Whom can they get to write the eulogy? Why, the playwright. He’s on the payroll, isn’t he?

There’s a moral here about choosing one’s benefactors wisely. And there are signs that “Breaking Legs” does want to say a little something about how easily an intellectual can fall under the power of guys whose impulses are very simple indeed.

But it also would like to be a flat-out gangster comedy, in the farcical tradition of “Three Men on a Horse.” As such, it needs a lot of work. Acts I and II.

First problem: The premise. Comedy is always sharper when it’s absolutely clear what the characters want. This isn’t established here. We’re not sure why the mob is diddling around with some college professor’s play when they could be backing their kind of Broadway show, something with dancing cats in it.

Maybe they’re trying to get the professor into “The Family”--to snag him for their tough-talking niece, who once sat in his classroom (Sue Giosa--overtones of “Educating Rita” here). But no, that can’t be it. They don’t realize that she’s hot for him until Act II.

It can’t be that they like his script--they haven’t read it. Maybe they’re interested in setting up a money-laundering scheme? What we absolutely can’t believe is that they expect to make a profit here. So why are they wasting their time?

Second problem: The plot. It needs thickening. All that happens is that the professor vaguely wants out of the deal once he understands who his real partners are, and then decides that there are advantages in staying in. Something more needs to happen in his journey than a night of passion on his ex-student’s Castro Convertible.

Still, it’s clear why the Old Globe’s Jack O’Brien decided to close the theater’s summer season with this little number. It’s an audience show, if you can get the audience to go along with it. And it gives O’Brien’s actors a chance to swagger around like dons in “The Godfather,” which they do with great style.

Mike Genovese is especially impressive as Uncle Mike, who laughs without moving his lips. This is a very broad cartoon, with a core of real danger, especially when he toys with poor Uncle Frankie, played with “Godfather” intensity by Eddie Zammit.

Giosa is equally plausible as the professor’s ex-student. She dresses like a bimbo (Robert Wojewodski did the costumes) but she knows exactly where she’s going, and she may well displace Uncle Mike as head of the family. It’s a surprisingly well-written part, under all that va-va-voom, and Giosa plays it with great spontaneity.

The professor-playwright’s part is dim, and Mullavey struggles to find things for the character to do besides look apprehensive. One thing he could do is sharpen his speech. It’s fine for professors to sputter, but they mustn’t swallow their syllables.

Cliff Faulkner’s set is a working Italian restaurant, complete with red-checked tablecloths and an ice machine. The food is the real stuff, brought in from a local restaurant. The play needs to decide whether it wants to be the real stuff, or a cartoon.

Plays Tuesdays-Sundays at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Closes Oct. 22. Balboa Park, San Diego. Tickets $18-$25. (619) 239-2255.

‘BREAKING LEGS’

Tom Dulack’s play, at the Cassius Carter Center Stage, Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. Director Jack O’Brien. Scenic designer Cliff Faulkner. Costumes Robert Wojewodski. Lighting John B. Forbes. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Hollie Hopson. With Greg Mullavey, T.J. Castronovo, Sue Giosa, Mike Genovese, Richard Kneeland and Eddie Zammit.