Stage Light

Playwright Jim Geoghan knows City Island, an obscure islet in Long Island Sound connected to the Bronx by a mechanized drawbridge. But sadly, in his muddled and formulaic comedy-drama, “King of City Island,” at Theatre East, Geoghan uses what he knows as a mere backdrop to material that not only lacks the pulse of a writer’s personal experience but doesn’t even rate as a sitcom pilot.

And, make no mistake, sitcom pilot is certainly the feeling here, under Michael Alaimo’s tepid direction. The early action, introducing drawbridge operator Cazzie (Jeffry Druce) and his girlfriend Donna (Elaine Pelino) who has been trying to tie the knot with him for 17 years, is all engineered to generate laughs. The mechanics are prime-time network stuff more than theater.

This is soulless comedy, since Geoghan’s story line is implausibly contrived from start to finish. With apparent Job-like patience, Donna puts up with Cazzie’s delays of marriage but warns him that he is risking prison when she learns of his latest in a line of botched get-rich-quick schemes: clipping roses from people’s yards, drying them and reselling them as potpourri with a forged Calvin Klein logo. During all of this, Cazzie’s long-gone brother Ambrose (Rob Cobuzio) has quit the priesthood and returned to City Island.

Two months later, with the predictability of clockwork, Cazzie is convicted and sentenced to prison for his scheme. In the next 10 months, Ambrose conducts quasi-religious positive thinking group sessions for Donna and the neighbors, including boisterous Muriel (Rhonda Lee Dorton) and Cazzie’s partners in crime Danziger (Robert Rhine) and Luntz (Jeff Blumberg). Why this pair weren’t prison-bound along with Cazzie is one of this play’s countless question marks.

By the point when Geoghan gets around to Cazzie’s return and his soul-searching climax, any effort to bring substance to such arch comic material has been wasted. Ambrose is reduced to a series of numbing New Age one-liners (“You’re becoming a human being”) and Donna’s final giving-in to Cazzie is an insult to every thinking woman (or man, for that matter) in the audience.

The performances are as arch as the material, with Alaimo doing nothing to tone down Druce’s goombah mannerisms or to help Pelino make her character the least bit compelling.

“King of City Island,” Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Nov. 29. $14. (818) 760-4160. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.