Malevolent Glee

As Fox’s Glee has recently proven, there’s something powerful about human voices raised together in song. But like Glee, the harmonies in black comedy Glee Club aren’t enough to overcome the unlikeable characters and lack of plot.

The eight members of Romeo, Vermont’s glee club are having trouble getting through rehearsal. Star singer Hank (Tom Staggs) has recently quit drinking, and can’t sing as well as he once did. The other members, staring down an important gig for their sole benefactor at an old folks’ home, don’t take the news kindly. Of course, none of them are in the running for Mr. Congeniality. Nick (David DelGrosso) isn’t happy unless he’s verbally jabbing the rest of the group. Paul (Steven Burns) is almost certainly a serial killer. Greg (Carter Jackson) is convinced that his cancer, in remission for almost two decades, will kill him any day. Mark (Robert Buckwalter) is more concerned with his ex-wife and her lawyer than the rehearsal. And songwriter and pianist Ben (Stephen Speights) can’t enjoy the group at all, preferring to bellow at them a few bars into their song.

The problem with Glee Club, despite its jagged sense of humor, is that playwright Matthew Freeman has written characters so loathsome that we ultimately can’t care whether or not they manage to shove Hank off the wagon for the sake of the group. The contrast between their foul-mouthed selves and their wide-eyed, open-mouthed beatific expressions while singing is amusing, but not quite believable.

All the men claim that singing together is one of the bright spots in their lives (if not the sole pleasure). And while their lives seem barren and desolate enough for singing to be their only solace, none of the men really seem to care about the music—save Fred (Bruce Barton), who sings, as Ben points out, like an aunt in church. The group’s rehearsals seem more like a structured environment for releasing their disappointments on one another, not a place to harmonize.

The actors are all delicious comic performers, totally committed to the material at hand. Perhaps too committed, since they’re all so unlikable. Burns, as the quietly intimidating Paul, gets the best and funniest non sequiturs, and Speights is an exasperated delight as Ben watches while the group falls apart in front of him.

By the time the group finally gets through their song without interruptions (a hilariously bleak ditty by Speights about how the world will occasionally make you smile, despite the shit along the way), they seem to have reached a détente of some sort. The act of singing, like life, can still make them smile. Whether or not they’ll make you smile—and the audience on the night I attended was grinning from ear to ear—will depend on your tolerance for angsty, nearly defeated grown men.

> Glee Club

Through Apr. 3, Access Theater, 380 Broadway (betw. Walker & White Sts.), 212-868-4444; $25.