One look at the decadent ’30s mansion where “Stop Hitting Yourself” is set, and it’s hard not to gasp. A giant dollar sign flashes in the background, melted cheese is pouring from a fountain and everything, including the piano, is gilded within an inch of its life.
Even the cast is gilded — or, at least, in fancy evening wear, with gold socks or pocket squares.
Just when you start thinking it’ll be hard to top Mimi Lien’s scenic design and Emily Rebholz’s costumes, the synchronized tap-dancing begins.
The actors look like an enthusiastic flash mob rather than the second coming of Fred and Ginger, but no matter. Undeterred, they engage the audience in a game of “Lookie lookie don’t, lookie lookie do” — posing for a living tableaux while we close and then open our eyes.
This goofiness is rare at Lincoln Center’s LCT3, usually drawn to serious “issue” plays like the Pulitzer-winning “Disgraced,” about assimilation and terrorism.
But “Stop Hitting Yourself,” by the Austin, Texas-based Rude Mechs, does try to say something. And that’s where it goes awry.
The show’s description drops references to “Pygmalion” and Busby Berkeley, and mentions the “modern conservative dilemma” between honoring both charity and individualism.
But it’s one thing to advertise your aims in press releases, and quite another to put together a coherent production.
And so “Stop Hitting Yourself” — which was devised collectively by the company and directed by Shawn Sides — is made up of entertaining parts that don’t gel into a convincing whole.
At the heart of the show is a competitive charity ball organized by a doddering queen (Paul Soileau in drag). The two contestants are the voice of nature (a hairy wildman played by Thomas Graves) and the voice of greed and ambition (Joey Hood’s “Unknown Prince”).
They are surrounded by the ruler’s entourage, which includes archetypes from ’30s musicals: a maid (Heather Hanna), a socialite (Lana Lesley), a magnate (E. Jason Liebrecht) and a “trust-fund sister” (Hannah Kenah).
The play jumps from scene to scene in a haphazard way. Now and then, the audience is invited into the action, often with the magnate giving out actual dollar bills — then asking the recipient to do something in return.
Other times the actors break from character for improvised confessionals — one principal claimed to splurge on Lush bath products.
Whatever point there is ends up diluted into ineffectiveness. The show is fun, but it may just be too gentle for the hard-hitting message it’s trying to convey.