Steve **

If you arrive early at the Signature Center for the New Group’s production of Mark Gerrard’s dramedy Steve, you will find Malcolm Gets already onstage playing show tunes on an upright piano. He is joined by four other cast members for an enjoyable 15-minute Broadway songfest. At play’s end, there’s a charming musical curtain call. Unfortunately, between those two points there is the play itself which, for me, wore out its welcome long before its 90 minutes had passed. Although there are strong superficial similarities with the recently opened Dada Woof Papa Hot — both plays deal with a gay couple approaching middle age who are raising a child, their fears about losing attractiveness, their worries about infidelity and their relations with another gay couple, the play that Steve really reminded me of was Matt Crowley’s 1968 hit The Boys in the Band. Both begin with a birthday party that turns out badly. Despite all the ways that gay life has changed in the intervening years, the characters’ mode of relating to each other has not made much progress. If anything, modern technology has increased the possibility of bad behavior. There was no sexting in 1968. Steven (Matt McGrath, so good recently in The Legend of Georgia McBride), once a chorus boy and singing waiter, has just turned 47. His partner Stephen (Gets) is a successful attorney. Steven is now a stay-at-home dad raising their unseen 8-year-old son Zach. (For some reason that have not chosen to marry.) When Steven retrieves his partner’s cellphone from Zach, who has “borrowed” it, he finds a sexting exchange between Stephen and Brian (Jerry Dixon), the partner of Steven’s oldest friend Matt (Mario Cantone). The fifth guest at the birthday dinner is Carrie (Ashlie Atkinson), their terminally ill lesbian friend whose lover abandoned her when she became sick. Their waiter is a hunky Argentinian named Esteban (Francisco Pryor Garat) who keeps turning up at various locations throughout the play. Just to round out the name game, there is a fourth Steven, Brian and Matt’s prodigiously endowed trainer, who is unseen but much commented upon. Any attempt at meaningful communication is short-circuited by turning either to show-queen bitchiness or raunch. One scene is instantly replayed with a different ending, but that device goes nowhere. There is a funny scene where Stephen is juggling texts, sexts and a phone conversation with his mother. The capable cast does their best to animate characters that aren’t well-developed. Allen Moyer’s set is elegantly simple and Tom Broecker’s costumes are fine. Director Cynthia Nixon plays a weak hand well. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

The Legend of Georgia McBride ***

Dave Thomas Brown & Afton Williamson. Photo by Joan Marcus

This play by Matthew Lopez (The Whipping Man), kicking off MCC’s new season at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, could serve as a textbook example of a guilty pleasure. Its plot is as predictable as a Swiss train and as deep as a thin mint, but its appeal is hard to resist. Casey (Dave Thomas Brown), a charming slacker with an underdeveloped sense of responsibility, and Jo (Afton Williamson), his lovely wife, are already struggling to get by when they learn Jo is pregnant.

Casey loses his gig as Elvis impersonator at a failing bar in the Florida panhandle when Eddie (Wayne Duvall), the owner, decides to see whether a drag show will attract more business. Eddie's cousin Tracy (the superb Matt McGrath) turns up with friend Rexy (the ever-reliable Keith Nobbs, who also plays Jason, Casey’s old friend and landlord) to take over the entertainment. They let Casey stay on as bartender. When Rexy goes on a bender, Casey is pressed into service to do her faux Edith Piaf act. A one-time favor turns into a smart career move. As Georgia McBride, Casey become a local star.

Dave Thomas Brown. Photo by Joan Marcus

Of course, he has not told his wife about his change of occupation. You can figure out the rest. This slender material is greatly enhanced by a terrific cast, outlandish costumes by Anita Yavich, even more outlandish wigs by Jason Hayes, an appropriately seedy set by Donyale Werle, hilarious choreography by Paul McGill and smooth direction by Mike Donahue. You may not remember it five minutes later, but you are likely to have a good time. Running time: 1 hr, 40 minutes, no intermission.

Verité **

I envied the people around me who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves at a preview performance of Nick Jones’s new play at LCT3. From the get-go, I did not buy into the play’s premise — that a mysterious publishing house whose catalog cannot be found on the “normal” internet would offer a $50,000 advance to Jo Darum (Anna Camp), a stay-at-home suburban mom, whose only work is a fantasy novel that took her over a decade to complete, to write a memoir for them. The stipulations are that she make “interesting choices” in her life and write only about things that actually happened. Jo lives with her blue-collar husband Josh (Danny Wolohan) and young son Lincoln (Oliver Hollmann) in the attic apartment of Josh’s sister Liz’s (Jeanine Serralles) home. The comic/creepy publishers Sven (Robert Sella) and Andreas (Matt McGrath) have broad accents that somehow simultaneously combine elements from Scandinavia and South Asia. When the handsome Winston (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) appears, claiming to be a former high school classmate who has long had a crush on her, Jo assumes that he is a ringer, sent by the publishers to help her make some interesting choices. She refuses to join her family for a trip to Myrtle Beach and instead runs off with Winston. Complications ensue. I won’t give away more except to say there is an amusing surprise ending. The tone varies from satire to farce to melodrama. The characters seemed one-dimensional and the theme of illustrating the lengths people will go to achieve recognition seemed a bit tired. Although there were flashes of wit along the way, the play did not involve me sufficiently to care much about the outcome. Andrew Boyce has devised a rotating modular set that works efficiently. (I am still trying to figure out how he managed to change the contents of an onstage refrigerator.) Paloma Young’s costumes are amusingly apt, especially Sven and Andreas’s footwear. Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s (Hand of God) direction is uncluttered. Running time: one hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.