In 'Miracle at Naples,' 'F' Isn't for Funny

"Miracle at Naples"

Written by David Grimm; directed by Peter Dubois; scenic design by Alexander Dodge; costume design by Anita Yavich; lighting design by Rui Rita; sound design by Ben Emerson; original music by Peter Golub

Cast in order of appearance:

Flaminia, Christina Pumariega; Francescina, Alma Cuervo; Don Bertolino Fortunato, Dick Latessa; La Piccola, Lucy DeVito; Tristano, Pedro Pascal; Matteo, Gregory Wooddell; Giancarlo, Alfredo Narciso; Ensemble, Paul Cereghino, Sam Kikes, Rebecca Newman, Jessica Uher

Performances: Now through May 9, Huntington Theatre Company, Wimberly Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston

Tickets: Box Office at 617-266-0800 or www.huntingtontheatre.org

Playwright David Grimm apparently went to the George Carlin School of Comedy. Repeat the seven words that can't be said on television often enough and people might start to think they're funny.

Not.

Grimm's new play, Miracle at Naples, receiving its world premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company's Wimberly stage at the Boston Center for the Arts now through May 9, is an offensive, boring, self-indulgent waste of perfectly talented actors, all stridently punctuating every other - no, make that every - sentence with crude swears and even cruder epithets. In an attempt to be oh, so smart and oh, so clever, Grimm substitutes crassness for wit, unsuccessfully cloaking his tasteless bathroom humor beneath the brazen mask of commedia dell'arte.

Set in Naples circa 1580, Miracle aspires to create a cockeyed comic tribute to our eternal search for love and companionship by crashing together the contradictions between sex and romance, cynicism and faith, cunning and innocence, and street theater and vaulted poetry. It's an interesting premise, revealing the simple goodness that lies in the middle ground between saints and sinners, but Grimm's non-stop barrage of unfunny juvenile slapstick leaves such an acrid taste in the mouth that it's impossible to savor the few sweet, redeeming moments that are available.

Hairspray's Tony Award-winning Dick Latessa leads a band of bawdy and malcontent traveling players who arrive in Naples on the day the city's annual miracle is due to occur. Hungry for food and desperate for money, the actors are nevertheless forbidden to perform until the dried blood of beheaded patron saint Gennaro liquefies in its ampoule. Citizens fear that the troupe's lewd and lascivious behavior will anger the saint and prevent him from once again bestowing good fortune on the city and granting the wishes of the faithful. With time on their hands and food and sex on their minds, the actors set in motion a chain of hedonistic events that could easily make a sailor blush.

As the company's founder and director, Don Bertolino Fortunato, Latessa does his best to reveal the world-weary and lonely actor beneath the selfish, hard-baked crust. He is a man who has almost outlived his usefulness, painfully aware that his improvisational art form is beginning to give way to more refined and less accessible scripted plays. But he is also a pleasure-seeking egoist who hurls rude insults at his daughter, his nephew, his late wife, and the local nurse/guardian who becomes his volatile paramour even as she castigates her young charge for dallying with two troupe members - at the same time. For the most part Latessa wrestles with Grimm's prurient excesses and wins, but even he, usually a master of the off-hand delivery, seems crushed at times from the weight of too many forced expletives.

Alma Cuervo as the nurse Francescina is the formidable common-sense philosopher of Naples, but she starts her character off a bit shrewishly, perhaps because she is charged with being the first person to establish the farcical, vulgar tenor of the show. Her caustic edge gradually does soften, though, and eventually she balances her tart tongue with a knowing heart. Flaminia, the beautiful virgin whose purity Francescina is hell bent on protecting, is played with a suitable self-absorbed, brooding petulance by Christina Pumariega. She's equally foolish when falling prey to swaggering actor Giancarlo's (Alfredo Narciso) empty poetry as she is when falling prone to buffoonish actors Matteo and Tristano's (Gregory Wooddell and Pedro Pascal) libidinous charms.

Of all the cast members in Miracle at Naples, Wooddell and Pascal seem most at home in the commedia dell'arte style. Their endless slapstick and swearing seem unforced, and their characters are by far the most likeable. When they suddenly find themselves falling in love with each other, it is with an almost child-like abandon that is refreshingly simple. Lucy DeVito, too, as Bertolino's hapless daughter La Piccola, has an easy way with a barb or punch line. Diminutive, overlooked, taken for granted yet determined and spunky, she volleys insults back as quickly as she receives them. She deliciously demonstrates both a shrewd mind and a vulnerable heart.

When the curtain opens on Miracle at Naples, promise all but fills the theater. A wonderful, warmly lit stone and stucco Neapolitan piazza invites us into an Old World city gone slightly askew. Playfully angled brick and mortar exterior walls and a towering, tilted statue of San Gennaro suggest irreverent mayhem is likely to ensue. Unfortunately the play's ambitions are never fulfilled. Playwright Grimm and his developmental collaborator, Huntington Artistic Director Peter Dubois, trap too many disjointed themes within a torrent of gratuitous overindulgence.

Had Grimm toned down the Animal House profanity or DuBois helped his cast members deliver shock-value language as if it were everyday chatter, the humanity and humor lurking below the surface might have had a chance to shine through. As written and directed in this trash-talking world premiere, Miracle at Naples is a bloody tasteless bore.

PHOTOS by T. Charles Erickson: Gregory Wooddell as Matteo and Christina Pumariega as Flaminia; Dick Latessa as Don Bertolino Fortunato; Lucy DeVito as La Piccola and Pedro Pascal as Tristano