My Big Gay Italian Wedding, The Gay Agenda, On The Levee, The Merchant of Venice

 
It’s hard to know how caustically to review the unspeakably bad My Big Gay Italian Wedding, first seen Off-Broadway at the Actors’ Playhouse in 2003 and reopened May 22 at St. Luke’s. Like the similarly themed gay comedy Boys Just Wanna Have Fun (2007), it’s another vanity production written by and starring Anthony J. Wilkinson as an everyday guy (albeit, a gay one) who scores a stunningly beautiful boyfriend, this time played by out Amazing Race winner Reichen Lehmkuhl. Talk about wish fulfillment! It would be nice to say Wilkinson’s delusion is cute, harmless fun but it’s not. It’s an amateurish piece of junk that preys on our community’s desire to support gay writers and gay-themed vehicles. Wilkinson’s script celebrates and exploits every cliché imaginable while the quality of the acting would make a rural community theatre blush with shame.
 
More fun and infinitely more gay-positive is Micah Bucey and Nicholas Williams’ The Gay Agenda, which just concluded a short run of two different shows, “Great Big Broadway Show” and “Songstyles of the Queer and Famous,” at Ars Nova last month. Distinctively adorable and brimming with talent, Bucey and Williams put a gay twist on the classic double-act, with Bucey playing the manic funnyman to Williams’ straightlaced sidekick. Bucey—who could be the love child of Charles Nelson Reilly and Jerry Lewis—transforms into dozens of madcap characters, while Williams calmly plays the piano (quite well, by the way) while occasionally looking vexed with Bucey’s antics. Their songs are fresh, funny and surprisingly complex, even when they’re in service of a musical version of Jaws IV. Watch for their return—and be sure to go early for cookies!
 
I can’t recommend On the Levee, an overambitious, misguided dramatization of the Great Flood of 1927 in Greenville, Miss., which has too many characters, too many acts and not enough focus. Directed by Lear deBessonet and written by Marcus Gardley with art by Kara Walker and music and lyrics by Todd Almond, On the Levee is an important story that would be better told in a documentary or a miniseries. And despite some contemporary line readings, I do recommend The Public’s The Merchant of Venice at the Delacorte, which will run in repertory with The Winter’s Tale thru Aug 1. Starring a terrific Al Pacino and Lily Rabe as Shylock and Portia, this dark spin on the Bard’s classic features a great set by Mark Wendland. Line up now!    N  
 
My Big Gay Italian Wedding plays St. Luke’s (308 W 46th St, 212-239-6200). On the Levee plays through July 11 at The Duke (229 W 42nd St, 646-223-3010). The Merchant of Venice plays through August 1 at Delacorte (Central Park West @ 81st St, ShakespeareInThePark.org).