Theatre in Review: Dada Woof Papa Hot (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)

	Patrick Breen, John Benjamin Hickey. Photo: Joan Marcus

The topics du jour, gay marriage and parenting and their discontents, get their latest workout in Peter Parnell's new play -- and you can't accuse him of not treating them with the seriousness and respect they deserve. While Mark Gerrard's similarly themed Steve, now at The New Group, couches its characters' anxieties behind a smokescreen of wisecracks and shared musical theatre references -- an approach that, even as it entertains, leaves the author slightly open to charges of dealing in stereotypes -- Dada Woof Papa Hot is half wry, half fretful, its varied cast of characters struggling to live up to ideals they loudly endorse, even if they don't always quite believe in them. Of the two, Dada Woof Papa Hot is much more earnest, sometimes to a fault.

Parnell's elegant structure focuses on three interlocking marriages, each of them threatened by adultery -- a surprisingly novel word in a gay context. Rob, a psychotherapist, is married to Alan, a freelance nonfiction writer. (He's currently working on an article about "the fidelity gene," a hormonal predisposition that supposedly tilts some men toward faithfulness.) In their fifties, they have a little daughter, and the demands of raising her are far more draining than they ever imagined. Rob -- who is neat, precise, and thoroughly professional about everything, from treating patients to choosing the right restaurant -- is generally content, but Alan, who has the unshaven, untucked look of the stay-at-home author, comports himself like a man suffering from an itch that remains stubbornly, permanently out of reach. For one thing, their daughter vastly prefers Rob, barely permitting Alan to touch her; for another, she keeps intruding on their sex life. (Rob explains that their daughter acts out because she feels powerless. "Powerless?" roars Alan. "She's the most powerful person in the room.")

Indeed, Alan is caught in a double bind. As a young man in the 1980s, he held fast to a dream of settling down with someone, even as his boyfriend serially cheated on him -- a fact that he mentions so often that it clearly still rankles. Now that he has the life he always wanted, he admits, stumped, "I just don't feel gay anymore."

Rob and Alan are friends with Michael, a rumpled, ironic, elfin fellow who composes Broadway musicals -- he's a little bit the worse for wear, having spent too much time in the headlight glare of theatre critics -- and his highly composed, take-charge wife, Serena. Michael, who is recovering from his latest flop, admits to Alan that he has begun seeing Julia, a television actress with a personality as hard and shiny as polished brass. Michael, who once cheated on Serena as matter of course, then reformed, dismisses the new affair with a chuckle and a wave of his hand, renaming it "a dalliance." Alan is appalled -- after all, Michael and Serena have children. And, dangerously, the prospect of his close friend straying gives a shape to Alan's own dissatisfaction, one that he doesn't really want to think about.

Trouble arrives in the form of new friends: Scott and Jason, another married-with-children pair. Scott is a button-down businessman with generally conservative views. (There's a brief flurry of panic when everyone worries that they may have befriended a Republican.) Jason is raffishly handsome, with a toned body that would have made Michelangelo pick up his chisel; indeed, at the beach he enjoys changing his clothes in the open, so everyone can have a look. Jason is happy with Scott, but not enough to stop catting around with other men. With Scott's very reluctant agreement, he is allowed to roam, providing he plays by the rules. Jason's graphically detailed list of activities permitted and forbidden provides Papa Woof Dada Hot with one of its most attention-getting moments.

One afternoon, Jason -- not entirely without provocation -- makes a pass at Alan, who, after only a little bit of protestation, succumbs. "I just don't want you to think it's because I'm desperate or anything," he says. "I'm not Kate Winslet." It only happens once, but it is enough to send destabilizing shock waves through both marriages. Furthermore, Alan, spending time with Michael and Julia and consumed with guilt, baits them both, alluding to their affair, of which he is supposed to know nothing, and strongly hinting at the popular notion that Julia's husband is a closet case. Before long, Alan is estranged from both his husband and his best friend.

Scene by scene, as its characters begin to explore an all-new world of ordinary unhappiness, Dada Woof Papa Hot feels accurate, but its constant worrywart stances eventually become a bit wearing. (The title refers to the first four words spoken by Alan and Rob's daughter. As Alan wryly notes, "If you put them together, they say what every gay dad wants to hear.") The characters' constant emotional scab-picking, their lists of everything they don't have in their marriages, begins to feel monotonous and more than a little untoward, given the highly privileged world -- of large apartments, private schools, and chic bistros -- they inhabit. It's not until the play's final moments that the issue of joy in marriage is addressed -- and movingly so, in a beautifully written speech for Alan -- and by then such thoughts seem long overdue. At times, I sorely missed the slashing irony and wiseacre comedy of Steve; in contrast, Parnell's characters can seem a little drab in their self-involvement.

Under Scott Ellis' direction, however, the company of eight goes a long way toward making us care about what happens to them. As Rob, Patrick Breen handles with understated power a speech in which he envisions an alternate life, without children, which he finds inexpressibly sad. John Benjamin Hickey's Alan is never more truthful than when, having kissed Jason, he quietly sheds tears that signal a dozen mixed emotions. Scott is a perilously underwritten role, but Stephen Plunkett makes the most of the scene in which he breaks down, exposing the wound at the heart of his marriage in front of friends. Alex Hurt's Jason is convincingly a sexual operator who also wants to be a good husband and father -- and who doesn't see the contradiction. John Pankow, as Michael, amusingly needles Alan's many ambivalences with a single sharp thrust: "I mean, it's gay, yeah, but it's still marriage, right?" Kellie Overbey is good company as Serena, especially when she pulls out her cellphone to bark General Patton-style orders to her mother, who serves as her babysitter. Tammy Blanchard's Julia is both genial and as tough as they come, but she also has a slightly too-tentative smile that signals her weary awareness that many marriages -- not least her own -- aren't what they seem.

The production benefits from a sleek look, beginning with John Lee Beatty's set, which features a diamond-shaped arrangement of wood at center stage; scenic wagons roll on all four diagonals, forming a variety of locations including apartments, parks, restaurants, and a Fire Island beach house. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting underscores the mood of each scene with his usual tact and attention to detail. Jennifer von Mayrhauser's costumes are especially alert to how the well-off favor expensively distressed casual wear. John Gromada's sound design combines attractive incidental music with a number of ambient effects (restaurant chatter, ocean waves, etc.)

Dada Woof Papa Hot ends with at least some of the marriages surviving, and it's safe to say that all the characters have a new appreciation of the difficulties and dangers of spending one's life with one person -- and trying to make a family with children in the bargain. But the play sometimes overvalues the challenges facing the likes of Rob, Alan, Scott, and Jason. Their situations -- they are facing problems the rest of the world has dealt with for centuries -- somehow seem the stuff of comedy rather than sensitive, hand-wringing drama. -- David Barbour