THEATER REVIEW : Sincere Insights Don’t Dawn in ‘Twilight’ : Loaded setup of homophobia and genetic questions takes family and audience on a guilt trip softened by jabs of humor.

Henny Youngman hovers in spirit, if not flesh, over “The Twilight of the Golds,” a cautionary tale about genetics, homosexuality and the three original cast albums of “Gypsy.” Jonathan Tolins’ seriocomic play at the Booth Theater is a slicked-up cross between a Michael Crichton scenario and “Catskills on Broadway,” mixing the au courant paranoia of the former with the in-your-face shtick of the latter. Take my gay son, please.

True to its inner-shtetl mentality, “The Twilight of the Golds” (which premiered in January at the Pasadena Playhouse) takes the audience on the guilt trip of a lifetime, easing our path with goosing one-liners about oral sex and rectal thermometers. These are just bait, however, wormy little teasers that lure us into Tolins’ high-concept snare: What would you do if genetic identification could spot a homosexual in the making during the earliest stages of pregnancy?

Our tour guide for this speculative journey is one David Gold (Raphael Sbarge), a struggling New York set designer with a pushy attachment to opera and musical comedy. In the reductive worlds according to Tolins, this is how we know he is gay. This, plus a prominent red ribbon and a tendency to patronize his prototypical Jewish family, philistines to the last: sister Suzanne (Jennifer Grey), a buyer for Bloomingdale’s; her doctor husband Rob (Michael Spound); David’s investor dad Walter Gold (David Groh) and house-queen mother Phyllis (Judith Scarpone), whose insistent kvelling and beauty-parlor mummification evoke Molly Goldberg on a good hair day.

The clan gathers at Rob and Suzanne’s apartment for their third anniversary, a tribal occasion from which David’s lover has been excluded. The true depth of the Golds’ homophobia isn’t revealed, however, until Suzanne announces she is expecting. At Rob’s urging, Suzanne submits to an amniocentesis to weed out potential infantile diseases, only to discover that the kid is going to be “like David.” They’re so freaked out, this good Jewish liberal family, they can’t bring themselves to say the H word.

This is heady stuff for Broadway, but Tolins has neither the sophistication, the verbal eloquence nor, most importantly, the compassion to do his loaded setup justice. He can barely conceal his contempt for David’s family, particularly the women, who share a selfishness, moral cowardice and concern with appearances that has relegated the Jewish princess to one of the lowest pedestals in American mythology. As Suzanne, Grey tries to minimize the princess-y mannerisms, blanding out the character till she disappears completely into the folds of her IKEA furniture.

Tolins attempts to illuminate the Golds’ prejudices through a series of dreary monologues--one for each family member--delivered in pandering, can-we-talk jargon intended to hit us where we live. Instead of insights, we get middle-brow buzzwords (reaching my potential, getting in touch with the child within) that make everyone sound like they’re auditioning to open for Neil Sedaka at the Concord. Only Phyllis’ spiel--a tartly amusing gripe about being overwhelmed by information--hits its target, no small thanks to Scarpone’s frayed-nerve reading, which pushes subtly against the cliche confines of her role.

The play’s title is a pun on “Gotterdammerung,” the fiery climax of Wagner’s Ring cycle that provides the evening’s pretentious running metaphor for the Golds’ own trial by fire.

It also offers an opening for multiple jokes about how endless opera is, as well as such specious wisdom as, “When (opera) cannot be easily believed, that is when it most resembles life.” Tolins labors to resemble life and ends up straining our belief.

Director Arvin Brown gets glib, monochromatic performances from his cast, with the exception of Scarpone and Sbarge, who plays David “straight” and makes him a lot more engaging than someone who rams his own musical tastes down other peoples’ throats deserves to be. Our sympathies should otherwise be squarely in his corner, but you can’t help but feel for Dad when he cracks, Henny Youngman-style, “80,000 dollars in education and they still communicate through sitcom reruns.” Eightybucks for a pair of tickets and we still get “The Ed Sullivan Show,” minus the magic act.