Production, not the message, is dated in ‘Lenny’

Monday, Feb. 9, 2004 | 8:18 a.m.

The story is based on the life of foul-mouthed stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, who died of a drug overdose in 1966 at the age of 41.

But on a higher level it is more about the struggle over the First Amendment right of freedom of speech than about a self-destructive comedian.

The play may be boring to some, but it is relevant to all.

Politically, the First Amendment issue that drives the story is as significant today as it was when the Constitution was ratified more than 200 years ago.

Artistically, the production leaves something to be desired.

The large supporting cast (many of whom play three or four roles) does a good job. Karl Hart, who portrays the characters Sherman and a judge as well as a member of an audience, is especially memorable -- as is Michaela Goodman, who portrays Rusty (Bruce's stripper wife).

However, the play is episodic and sometimes difficult to follow, alternating between Bruce's private life and his life onstage.

New York Equity actor Josh Kleinmuntz, who speaks almost continuously during the two-hour-plus production, does a superb job in capturing Bruce's intensity, rage and flaws, but not his humor.

Kleinmuntz' interpretation of Bruce varies little, whether it is of Bruce doing his stand-up act or Bruce offstage.

The fault may not be entirely that of the actor.

"Lenny" is a time capsule that presents material that was beginning to grow old when it hit Broadway in 1971, five years after Bruce's death.

Forty years later, the material is even more dated.

Bruce used a lot of foul language to shock fans, but today the language is so common that it rarely causes a ripple. Even the nudity in the play seems passe and irrelevant.

If the humor is missing, the irony and the anger behind it is evident throughout and could be a source of biting social and political humor as easily today as it was in Bruce's era.

"You know what's sick?" Kleinmuntz, as Bruce, responds during a stand-up routine that refers to a Time magazine article about him. "I'll tell you what's really sick. In the Entertainment Capital of the World, Las Vegas, Nevada, Zsa Zsa Gabor will get $50,000 a week in that town. School teachers' salaries in that state, the top salary, is $6,000 a year. Now that is really sick, and that's the kind of sickness I wish that Time magazine would have written about."

"We have got to stop pissing money away on Radio Free Europe," he says. "Why? Because there is a whole nation inside our country, a nation of black people, that we dont know anything about..."

"A lot of marriages went West. They broke up in my generation because ladies didn't know that guys are different. Ladies are one emotion, guys are detached. A lady can't fall through a plate glass window and have sex with you five seconds later."

Bruce attacked religion, racism, hypocrisy, politics and a host of other social issues at a time when most comedians joked about mothers-in-law and other safe topics.

Ultimately his rage destroyed him. Time after time he was arrested on obscenity charges, depleting his bank account and making it all but impossible to find work. In the end, his humor was gone. He was reduced to angrily reading his court transcripts onstage.

He died alone and naked, his head in a toilet.

"Lenny" is classified as a drama, but it is more like a Greek tragedy set in the 20th century. Instead of a Greek chorus, a vague, scantily clad tribe of aborigines appears from time to time chanting "ya da, ya da, ya da."

Instead of an outdoor amphitheater, the story unfolds on a stage cleverly designed by Jeffrey Fiala's to serve as a nightclub, bedroom and courtroom.

And Bruce himself was a tragic figure in the classic sense of the word. The hero in a tragedy is one who is the victim of a flaw in his own character.

Bruce's flaw may have been his belief in freedom of speech.