Henry Winkler (from left), Daniel Breaker, Jenni Barber, Alicia Silverstone, Cheyenne Jackson and Ari Graynor shine, but David West Read’s raunchy script doesn’t sparkle. (Carol Rosegg)
In case you were wondering: No, an avalanche of lewd double-entendres and sex jokes isn’t enough to carry a comedy — you still need trivial things like, oh, a plot and characters.
David West Read seems to think that setting his Broadway debut, “The Performers,” in the world of porn is hilarious in and of itself. So the show never bothers with anything besides raunchy wisecracks that get less and less funny as the evening wears on. Thank God the production features a spot-on cast that includes Henry Winkler, Cheyenne Jackson and Alicia Silverstone.
The action takes place in a Vegas hotel during the Adult Film Awards. A (fictitious) New York Post reporter named Lee (Daniel Breaker) is in town to write a profile of an old schoolmate who’s up for Best Male Performer.
Jackson is just the right amount of hunky, sweet and vapid as Lee’s pal, who now goes by Mandrew. He’s married to a fellow XXX thespian, the equally dim-witted but loving Peeps (Ari Graynor).
Read wrings a lot of would-be laughs from the contrast between the sexually liberated Mandrew and Peeps and the straitlaced Lee and his milquetoast high-school sweetheart, Sara (Silverstone). Let’s just say the last pair’s flavor of choice is vanilla.
Thrown into the mix are veteran stud Chuck Wood (Winkler), who’s been at it since 1978, and Peeps’ busty frenemy, Sundown (Jenni Barber). “They call me Sundown because I go down,” she explains. “Like the sun.”
Like most of the show’s jokes, this zinger relies on “porno speak,” in which everything has a sexual meaning.
“Let’s blow this joint,” Sara tells Chuck, who replies, “Yeah, and if you’re lucky, I’ll let you blow my joint!”
Read also delivers the obligatory fake porn titles, like “I Ate Chinese and Now I’m Hungry Again” and “Spontaneass” — which the playwright loves so much, he uses it three times.
Under Evan Cabnet’s direction, the cast throws itself into the contrived situations and dialogue with impressive zest and panache.
As Jackson showed us in “Xanadu,” he’s peerless when it comes to playing goofy-sexy naiveté. Here he has a great match in Graynor, whose arch comic timing is so precise, you could set your watch by it. Breaker — equally good as Donkey in “Shrek” and the young lead in “Passing Strange” — makes a masterful straight man. And Winkler is oddly endearing as the porn world’s wise elder.
If only this gifted gang had more to work with than Read’s witless lines, moralistic streak and condescension for his characters, especially the women. Not everybody in porn is clueless: Just ask Sasha Grey. Yet Mandrew, Peeps and Sundown are airheads who make up for their minuscule brains with oversize endowments and hearts of gold.
Which, in the end, turns out to be key, since “The Performers” argues that love is what matters in life, if not in adult films. At Broadway prices, this greeting-card wisdom doesn’t come cheap.