A ‘Rough Crossing’ that glides smoothly

“Rough Crossing,” the Tom Stoppard work that opened Thursday at the Old Globe, is zany and arch and so self-consciously witty and light that, by comparison, a feather has the heft of an anvil.

It’s the 1930s, the heyday of leggy Broadway musicals, and a bickering pair of dramatists is on a luxury liner from Europe and under heavy pressure to finish a new script before the SS Italian Castle docks in New York. Along for the ride are a lovesick composer, an aging lothario of a leading man, and a headstrong Russian diva.

Stoppard has taken free rein with a 1924 play by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, “Play at the Castle,” and, with the help of five songs by Andre Previn, made it his own.

This is classic Stoppard country, where highly verbal characters trade barbs and clever asides at a manic pace and their show-biz egos inflate and deflate like balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This, after all, is the author of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” and the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Shakespeare in Love.” “We each fight life’s battles with the weapons God gave us,” intones one of the shipboard dramatists. “Mine is theater. Alas.”

As directed by Stan Wojewodski Jr., “Rough” is smooth, quick (barely two hours) and handsome. That the characters are barely more than stock figures from the Comedy Writing 101 build-a-play kit -- a fact acknowledged by the two partners in one of the “play within a play” winks at the audience -- is part of the fun.

“He can write a bit,” Gal (Christian Clemenson) says of his collaborator Turai (Marc Vietor). “Unfortunately he writes a lot.”

Too much of this sort of thing can get brittle and precious, but “Rough” knows when to break up the faculty clubbiness with some terrific sight gags (a storm that rocks the boat) and a steward with a taste for other people’s liquor (Dvornichek, played wonderfully by Mark Nelson). The songs aren’t memorable but offer a chance to look at pretty people in gorgeous costumes.

As the writing team, Clemenson and Vietor know how to fight without being tiresome and how to be self-absorbed but still appealing. Gal is a lush and a cynic, Turai an egotist and a conniver -- in short, they’re writers.

Turai drops his cultivated civility to unleash his razor tongue at Ivor, the over-the-hill leading man who -- understandably -- finds the new half-finished, half-baked play dumb beyond belief.

“I have a knack for words, don’t you know,” Ivor pleads in mid-rehearsal.

“How would I know that, since you’ve gone to such lengths to conceal it,” Turai responds. Ouch.

As Ivor, Alan Coates has just the right touch of insufferability and plaintiveness; the chin strap to keep his jowls from sagging is a nice touch. Ivor is still in love with the much younger Natasha (Jennifer Roszell), but she has moved on to Adam, the studly but tongue-tied composer played by Adam Greer.

Natasha has the name, accent and mannerisms of a cartoon character (see the Boris and Natasha segment in Rocky and Bullwinkle), but nobody expects the characters of “Rough” to have but a nodding relationship with real people. Dvornichek cheerfully changes his name to Murphy to accommodate his seagoing guests, and he is a landlubber whose unfamiliarity with all things nautical is one of the running gags. “This boat was designed by a lunatic,” he cries.

“Rough” is a play of parts, and the parts carry the night: particularly the ocean liner set of John Coyne and the period clothes of costume designer Katherine Roth. (Natasha’s gown is gorgeous; Adam’s “tennis anyone?” get-up is just right; and Turai’s foppishness is accented by his tweediness.)

There are running gags, and when they’ve run enough, “Rough” puts them away and says goodbye. Like a guest who has entertained you enough for one night.

*

‘Rough Crossing’

Where: Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 7 p.m.; Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.

Ends: Oct. 26

Price: $19-$52

Contact: (619) 239-2255

Running time: 2 hours