A Few Doors Down From Uranus

Turns out, it’s true: Location is everything. When I saw Devil Boys From Beyond last year as part of the 2009 Fringe Festival, I found it a “whiz-bang comedy.” (Let’s blame the Walter Winchell adjective on the 1957 setting.) And it was, in a sweaty, cramped theater during a festival that is usually more bust than bang. But now that Devil Boys has transferred to New World Stages (or, as a friend refers to it, “where Broadway goes to die”), what seemed inspired before now comes across as buoyant as a lead balloon.

Devil Boys, for anyone who missed the first sold-out run, is a tribute from Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliott (who also directs) to cheesy sci-fi movies and that’s equal parts camp and beefcake. Ace reporter Mattie Van Buren (Paul Pecorino) and her alcoholic ex-husband, photographer Gregory Graham (Robert Berliner) think they’ve found the scoop of their careers in reports from Lizard Lake, Fla., of a UFO landing. Flying down there on orders from their editor (Peter Cormican)—and trailed by Mattie’s rival, Lucinda Marsh (Chris Dell’Armo)—Mattie and Gregory find two octogenarian housewives shacking up with much younger, hotter men, men they claim are their husbands but may in fact be Plutopians from the planet Pluto.

I can’t quite pinpoint where the new production goes wrong. The cast remains intact—including Everett Quinton and Andy Halliday as Lizard Lake haus fraus Florence Wexler and Dotty Primrose—but the results are off. Jokes that cracked up audiences before are met with tepid enthusiasm; performances that felt outsized last year now feel strained. And nowhere is that more true than in the case of Quinton and Halliday. The latter often seems to forget that he’s onstage, and begins speaking in a normal tone of voice halfway through his dialogue.

The deliberately cheap special effects remain delightful, though some of Gail Baldoni’s costumes could have used an upgrade. The only cast member who has actively improved is Dell’Armo, who turns Lucinda into an eye-batting, manipulative bitch who owes no small debt to the women in Clare Booth Luce’s The Women. As Mattie, Halliday can often seem like a carbon copy of Charles Busch; the same sudden dips in timbre, the same bug-eyed double takes. And his late-in-the-show song still feels like a leftover from an earlier draft of the script.

As Mattie and company investigate why hunky, semi-naked men have invaded Lizard Lake (Jeff Riberdy and Jacques Mitchell are still just as chiseled, with a recently acquired stage authority), over-the-top dialogue like “You really are a hard-boiled bitch” garner laughs, but Elliott and his cast rely too much on striking poses and funny voices. And the pro-gay marriage ending feels tacked on to guarantee topicality. In transferring to a larger theater (with increased ticket prices), Devil Boys From Beyond has turned its shabby-chic charm into a liability.

Devil Boys From Beyond, through Dec. 30, New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-239-6200; $65.