Brothers Share in Spirit of Lunacy

It must have seemed like a good idea: That wacky foursome, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, taking the parts originated by Marx Brothers in the 1938 movie “Room Service” while adding a whole new layer of zaniness by creating a farce about themselves within the farce.

But the results now on view at the Mark Taper Forum, where the show opened Thursday night, are proof that unalloyed zaniness is actually a close cousin to tedium.

Paul Magid, Howard Jay Patterson, Michael Preston and Sam Williams are the four unrelated comedian-jugglers known as the Flying Karamazov Brothers. There is no fifth Karamazov to play straightman. Onstage, everyone’s a lunatic. The Brothers not only take on every role in the original 1937 John Murray-Allen Boretz play, they also play themselves in the here and now.

The dual plots work like so: In the present, the four Brothers are holed up in a deco Los Angeles hotel room to stage “Room Service” for a producer named Gordon who calls on the phone and screams at them while they are trying to avoid being served papers by some other producer who is suing them for god knows what mayhem. Plus, they don’t have a working credit card among them to order food. Just like the characters in the play they are rehearsing, the Brothers are besieged by and must constantly outwit the responsible world outside while struggling frantically to put on their play.

In the course of manicly switching roles, coats get torn off of one Brother and end up a split second later on another, inside out. A skirt gets pulled over a shoulder to become a scarf. The Brothers pull out more voices, sashaying walks, wigs and hats than Madonna does in a year. But for all the runway activity, there is very little actual liftoff.

Dumb jokes garnish the bustle. The Brothers favor puns, 10-year-old jokes about David Mamet and soft silliness. “Jesus, Peter, Paul and Mary! We’re being sued!” exclaims Sam Williams, the Brother of Falstaffian dimensions who borrows the clown-hair of the Three Stooges’ Larry. A string of contemporary references--jokes at the expense of Disney, David Geffen, Bill Gates and “Boogie Nights”--are more endearing but carry the same stamp of desperation to entertain.

The jokes are mostly delivered with an I’m-working-so-hard-please-don’t-hate-me energy. The evening’s overall effect is that of a dancer trying to leap with a club foot. It’s probably relevant to point that while the director, Robert Woodruff, has worked with the Brothers before, he is best known here for directing “In the Belly of the Beast” and “A Lie of the Mind”--plays with a remarkable lack of zaniness. Might one suggest this just isn’t his forte?

The Brothers pause periodically to perform authentically entertaining new-vaudevillian magic. When they sit at a long table rolling rubber balls back and forth, up and down, in rhythmic splendor, they create a fascinating, 3-D pong game and a percussive instrument all in one. Later, a relay-juggling/musical-chairs act is both fun and impressive. An insta-tableaux of the Last Supper and various sporadic athletic feats are also charming. Further, the Brothers are alert to the possibility of spontaneous comedy--an audience member’s mid-performance journey to and from her seat became an amusing playlet. But, at the end of the day, the Brothers come off here as doodlers rather than artists who can sustain a fully realized theatrical piece. Only Michael Preston was consistently funny and never seemed to ask dispensation from the audience. He earned every laugh without begging to be loved.

The Marx Brothers performed their antic behavior in the context of a larger, disapproving world around them. Their provocations had meaning because they punctured the pretensions of respectable people--people who felt it important to pretend they had unshakable dignity. Would Harpo have been as funny if Margaret Dumont didn’t exist? That question is answered firmly in this “Room Service.” Without straightmen, zaniness isn’t side-splitting; it’s merely cause for a splitting headache.

* “Room Service,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Also Nov. 24, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 21. $29-$37. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Paul Magid: Dmitri Karamazov and others

Howard Jay Patterson: Ivan Karamazov and others

Michael Preston: Rakitin Karamazov and others

Sam Williams: Smerdyakov Karamazov and others

A Mark Taper Forum production. By John Murray and Allen Boretz. Adapted by the Flying Karamazov Brothers with Paul Magid and Robert Woodruff. Directed by Robert Woodruff. Costumes and Sets Greco. Lighting Allen Lee Hughes. Sound Doug Wieselman and Jon Gottlieb. Original music Doug Wieselman. Choreographer Doug Elkins. Stage manager David E. Hutson.