Grown-Ups Time

Consider [The Kid] to be your summer popcorn musical. Buttery, salty and ultimately unmemorable, the song-strewn adaptation of sex columnist Dan Savage’s book about adopting a child with his boyfriend is a funny, smart and enjoyable musical—as long as it’s being performed right in front of you. But once you leave the theater, you’ll be hard pressed to remember just what about it you enjoyed.

Having opted for an open adoption, in which the birth mother chooses who adopts her children (a choice that left plenty of room for drama from bookwriter Michael Zam), Dan, played by Christopher Sieber, and his boyfriend Terry (Lucas Steele) spend most of the first act overcoming their fears that being a gay couple will hurt their chances at getting a child; the second act is less interesting, as they anxiously await the birth mother’s final decision as to whether or not she’ll give up her newborn.

The songs, from Jack Lechner and Andy Monroe, are witty and catchy in the moment. They’ve written a breezy score that sounds fun but never really goes beneath the surface. A few songs try, but they’re ultimately too wan to pluck heartstrings. Those particular songs are also hurt by Josh Prince’s static staging, which never involves anything more complicated than the cast rushing around the stage, pushing rolling chairs and jumping up and down.

But if the staging from Prince and director Scott Elliott is less than scintillating, Sieber’s lead performance wows. The rest of the cast ranges from welcome (Jill Eikenberry is fabulous as Dan’s mother, and the perpetually under-utilized Brooke Sunny Moriber pops up in several supporting roles) to serviceable. A cast that could uniformly sing would be pleasant, but Lechner and Monroe’s songs are mostly speak-singing, so Susan Blackwell and Jeannie Frumess, as the birth mother, pull it off. As summer entertainment, The Kid is tops—especially when one compares it to the nominated musicals for the Best Musical Tony. But as something deeper, this Kid has a lot of growing up to do yet.

Despite a decade since its last New York incarnation, Beth Henley’s [Family Week] still hasn’t matured. If the production at the Lucille Lortel is the result of 10 years of contemplation and rewriting, I shudder to think what the original was like. As her mother, sister and daughter arrive at the rehab facility in which Claire has ensconced herself after the murder of her son, old family rivalries are unearthed and waved about like banners.

Directed by a clueless Jonathan Demme, making his theater debut, Family Week lurches ahead in fits and starts. The bite-sized scenes give the illusion that Henley (who wrote the perpetually produced Crimes of the Heart) has lost her knack for writing a cohesive work, and the odd choices made by Demme only emphasize how out of sync the play is with reality.

Casting the African-American Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Rosemarie DeWitt’s sister is a bold decision, but one that is unnecessarily confusing, since it takes three scenes before we catch on that they are, in fact, sisters. And the wonderful Kathleen Chalfant is miscast as the monstrous mother, a woman who’s so messy that Chalfant’s shoot-from-the-hip style doesn’t translate.

DeWitt’s performance is a marvel of subtlety and sudden, irrational rages, but she’s working in a vacuum. And the less said about the shrill, loud and unenjoyable Sami Gayle, as Claire’s daughter, the better. Family Week needs to head back to whatever rehab helps poorly conceived and rendered plays less loathsome.

>>The Kid

Through May 29, [Acorn Theater], 410 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-279-4200; $61.25.

>>Family Week

Through May 23, [Lucille Lortel Theatre], 121 Christopher St. (betw. Bleecker & Hudson Sts.), 212-279-4200; $65-$95.