Chairman of the bored

If It Was Easy takes easy way out

Aesthetically, if not geographically, Little Five Points’ 7 Stages playhouse seems as distant as imaginable from the fluffy showbiz comedy If It Was Easy ... 7 Stages embraces the avant-garde theater of Brecht, Beckett and their modern stepchildren worldwide, while Easy is no more ambitious or challenging than early Neil Simon. Billed as a collaborative effort between non-profit 7 Stages and a commercial, star-driven production, If It Was Easy ... is the creation of two fixtures of New York theater, Tony-winning producer Stewart F. Lane and New York Post columnist Ward Morehouse III. Lane has directed readings of Easy for the Berkshire Theatre Festival and intends to take it to New York after trying it out on the Atlanta audience.

Judging from the 7 Stages production, however, If It Was Easy ... will need considerable work if it’s ever going to be “ready.” The strained Broadway-based farce, inspired by the writers’ own experiences, features thin relationships between stock characters, weak one-liners, bad badinage and no ending to speak of. Lane and Morehouse may know the business of New York theater like the backs of their hands, but in attempting broad comedy, they’re all thumbs.

The setting is the office of Steve Gallop (Kevin Dobson), “one of the most prolific independent producers of his day.” He’s currently riding a string of flops, as announced in the gossipy column of Randi Lester (Bonnie Comley). While arguing the point, Lester suggests that Gallop try producing a musical based on the life of the recently deceased Frank Sinatra. He claims not to be interested, but she runs an item to the contrary, and suddenly Sinatra! The Musical takes on a life of its own. The play even uses a projector for the old movie cliché of spinning Variety headlines for exposition.

Planning the musical leads to some silly but droll developments. Gallop wonders at his options if he can’t get the rights to use the singer’s name: The Hank Sonata Story? Ol’ Brown Eyes? The Director of the Board? The first act ends with Gallop’s office filling with would-be Sinatras, including an Amish elder crooning “Shooby-dooby-doo,” with hats over brows and raincoats over shoulders. Charles Horton’s Swedish dancing Sinatra is especially amusing.

The plot hinges on Gallop’s key investor and not-so-silent partner, made man “Jimmy Fingers” (Bill Miller). Not surprisingly, the gangster shoots down Gallop’s idea for an intimate one-man show and wants a star-studded extravaganza: “If the show’s a flop, he promises to show me where Jimmy Hoffa lives.” Jimmy has muscle, being able to enlist such stars as Barbra Streisand and Barbara Walters, no matter how inappropriate they are.

Lane and Morehouse’s best strengths are in their first-hand background in the play’s subject, and Gallop has informative speeches explaining such things as the economies of the New York stage and why Hollywood’s biggest stars won’t do Broadway. But rather than have the story emerge from those kinds of insider’s details — like the engineered flop turned disastrous hit in The ProducersEasy instead turns on a tedious romance and exhausted stereotypes, like the airhead would-be starlet turned secretary (Lindsay Wray). It even seems to contradict itself, pointing out that Gallop has only produced four or five failures, but that his play’s haven’t made money since 1974.

An unconvincing romance develops between Gallop and Lester in Act Two, but the play never offers the likable characters and efficient contrivances of a decent backstage comedy like Moon Over Buffalo. The banter has an artificial ring, as in exchanges like “Nice suit. Giorgio?” “No, Armani,” or “I’m Randi Lester, tabloid journalist.” “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” Even a middling backstage comedy like Moon Over Buffalo has sharper characterizations and more efficient contrivances. Instead, Easy thuddingly refers to plot points like the bad wiring in Gallop’s office to build to a preposterous conclusion that keeps the major conflicts being resolved. If It Was Easy takes an easy way out.

Dobson, an acting vet best known as Mack from “Knots Landing,” makes an occasionally rigid but reasonably game lead, jaded about his profession but still clinging to some theatrical idealism. With his Morey Amsterdam demeanor, Miller has a face made for mugging, but the Jimmy role is a lazily conceived burlesque of a mobster. Comley, meanwhile, has difficulty conveying credible emotions. Reacting to Gallop’s dilemma, she delivers the line, “Either way, you’re a dead man” with no perceptible feeling at all. Perhaps they’re going for Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, but Comley’s as stony and awkward as Candace Bergin in Murphy Brown.

If It Was Easy ... is not being produced under easy circumstances. Bugs are still being worked out of the young script, and it’s being staged at a theater and neighborhood whose core audience has little affinity for this kind of “zany” material. But its problems run deeper than that, and Ward and Morehouse, in writing characters inspired by their own experiences, may be too sympathetic to them to give the comedy any teeth. Or maybe Easy just needs a New York audience to respond to its inside jokes.

If It Was Easy ... plays through Aug. 6 at 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., with performances at 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. and 5 p.m. Sun. $15-$20. 404-523-7647.