Heavy-Handed Laughs

At its best, Tom Dulack’s comedy “Breaking Legs” comes off like a TV sitcom--broad but fun. Less-than-stellar productions, though, fall as flat as unleavened pizza crust.

Actors Alley’s current revival needs more leavening.

In “Breaking Legs,” college professor Terence O’Keefe (Henry LeBlanc) is trying to raise the cash to produce a play he wrote off-off-Broadway. He turns, for some unknown reason, to a former student, Angie (Kristine Berard), whose family owns an Italian restaurant in the New England university town where they both live.

Angie’s father and his, um, associates do have that kind of money. They are, however, the kind of investors who give loans in cash, in a paper bag, in a back alley. But the trio of unlikely impresarios is drawn to the idea because of the long odds. Why not invest a cool million and take it to Broadway? These are men who like to bet 40-1 on horses.

So what’s the problem? The professor gets nervous about his benefactors after Frankie Salvucci (Dale Kleine), whose debts are overdue, winds up in front of a speeding train. The mobsters get edgy about their investment, too, because the playwright’s murder scene seems “too real.”

Why, in the final scenes, O’Keefe goes from wanting out of the deal to bluffing to keep it, remains a mystery. As do the reasons for killing a small-timer like Frankie, if the mobsters are willing to lose $1 million on a play.

Enough laughs apparently put such prickly details out of mind in earlier productions. The 1989 play was revived in 1995 at the Pasadena Playhouse and was staged again last year at the Long Beach Studio Theatre. But somehow “Breaking Legs”--referring to both thespians’ way of wishing someone luck and mobsters’ way of settling a score--just doesn’t draw the laughs this time around.

Most of the humor comes from the unlikely partnership of Italian toughs and the spectacle-wearing professor. When O’Keefe refers to the Medici family, the tough guys think he’s talking about a crime family in New Jersey, for instance. The mobsters, however, need to be larger than life in order to pull off the jokes. Under Jeremiah Morris’ direction, they simply aren’t.

As Mike Francisco, Sam Ingraffia comes closest. He started out slowly opening night but seemed to get more comfortable in his tacky clothes and fake scar in the second act. The silent strong man Tino DeFelice (John Edwin Shaw) is woefully underused.

One after another, potentially humorous lines are lost in dialogue between Angie and her father, Lou (Tony C. Burton). Their timing is so off that all you can do is be thankful they aren’t in charge of docking with the space station Mir.

Berard, while undeniably striking, wavers between what one presumes to be her native Massachusetts accent and the Italian one she’s pasted on for the role. More than once she remembers the Italian accent halfway through a sentence. Terry Evans’ attractive set captures nicely the feel of the Italian restaurant’s back room, the strangely warm and comfortable spot where under-the-table deals are made. The dummy of Frankie used in the fight scene should have been nixed; it looked even too ridiculous for this comedy.

BE THERE

“Breaking Legs,” at Actors Alley’s El Portal, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; through Dec. 14. $16. (818) 508-4200.