In “Restoration,” her first major play since her 2000 Broadway hit “Dirty Blonde,” Claudia Shear has written herself some lascivious, sexed-up action. “I wish I could lick you clean,” Shear’s character, Giulia, sighs suggestively to her Italian boy toy, David.
Later, she rubs her bosom, clad only in a black bra, against his perfectly defined pecs. And then there’s the scene where she trails a finger against his . . .
There’s only one problem: Giulia’s David is the David — Michelangelo’s sculpture.
Giulia has been hired away from Brooklyn College to scrape away centuries of accumulated grime and clean him up. She spends months on a scaffold in Florence, painstakingly applying cleansing cataplasms on tiny spots — like a cosmetologist using the gentlest Bioré strips possible on a baby’s bottom.
There was a real risk of “Restoration” devolving into a cutesy American-in-Italy fable, especially since Giulia meets a hunky Florentine — a live one, that is.
Other than awestruck tourists, Giulia’s only company while she works on the statue is a security guard, Max. Almost predictably, he’s played by Jonathan Cake, the New York stage’s answer to Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey.
Cake pulls out all the stops on the charm train here, and his agreeable, poetry-quoting Max isn’t daunted by Giulia’s moods, which run the gamut from impatient to cranky
to furious.
But “Restoration” mostly sidesteps overt sentimentality, thanks to the sure hand of director Christopher Ashley (“Xanadu”). A dose of caustic humor helps, too.
Shear-the-author has not spared Shear-the-actress: The frumpy-grumpy Giulia is a self-righteous New Yorker who addresses the slinky local cultural bureaucrats (Tina Benko, Natalija Nogulich) with a mixture of sarcastic disdain and bristly impatience.
As annoying as she can occasionally be, Giulia gets the job done, just like the show itself. Despite spinning its wheels in the second half, “Restoration” is a comfortable blend of warmth, humor and art history.
And at least our heroine doesn’t end up trading her 500-year-old soul mate for the sensitive guard with whom she shares espressos and gelati — this isn’t “Eat, Restore, Love.”