Entertainment

Tom Sturridge steals ‘Orphans’ from Alec Baldwin in the play’s belated Broadway premiere

Considering its agitated gestation, it’s amazing how smooth “Orphans” is. During rehearsals, actor Shia LaBeouf had well-publicized — by himself — arguments with co-star Alec Baldwin and director Daniel Sullivan. In short order, LaBeouf was out and Ben Foster was in.

But the real surprise is the laughter. “Orphans” is meant to be one of the most hard-hitting dramas of the ’80s, but the audience at the Schoenfeld, where Lyle Kessler’s play is having a belated Broadway premiere, cracks up often.

And it’s laughing with the show, not at it.

It seems that in the 28 years since “Orphans” bowed off-Broadway, its darkly comic side has taken over. Whether that was the new team’s intention or not, this production works on its own terms.

The play takes place in the dilapidated Philadelphia house shared by two brothers. Treat (Foster), a small-time hoodlum, looks out for the younger, mentally fragile Phillip (Tom Sturridge). A dreamy shut-in — Treat told him his allergies will kill him — Phillip is a semiferal creature. Seemingly afraid to touch the floor, he gracefully jumps and slides over the stairs and furniture, and generally uses the set like an indoors parkour trail.

The brothers’ delicate balance is thrown out of whack after Treat brings home a drunk man, Harold (Baldwin), in hopes of scoring a ransom.

Harold turns out to be a lot tougher than Treat suspected.

“You kidnap a man, first thing you do is frisk him,” Harold patiently reminds him after pulling out a gun.

But Harold, who’s come from Chicago with a suitcase of stocks and bonds and a shady past, isn’t interested in killing Treat — instead he hires him as a bodyguard. An orphan himself, he sees fellow Dead End Kids in the brothers and moves in with them. Together they create their own oddball family.

The trio’s domestic scenes are played fast and deadpan, with comically surreal results.

Treat now struts his stuff in a three-piece suit. Phillip, who once subsisted on tuna and industrial quantities of mayonnaise, tries Harold’s bouillabaisse. More laughter.

The downside of pulling the play in a Coen brothers’ direction is that the intensity is diminished, and we lose the sense of danger and pathos — in some ways Harold has improved the siblings’ life, but in others he’s messed up their relationship.

Baldwin deftly suggests Harold’s paternal sentimentality, even if at times he feels like Jack Donaghy engaged in his toughest mentoring project yet.

In the end what we remember is Sturridge’s astonishing turn. The young British actor (“Pirate Radio”) is fearlessly physical, but he also gives us the sense of a wild child opening up to the world outside his window. Phillip may be the most unstable character on the stage, but he’s the one who keeps the show together.