‘Gift’ Wraps Friendship in Overly Neat Package

You can show off some fine Broadway singer-actors--chiefly James Barbour of the New York-bound “Jane Eyre”--and put a topcoat of professionalism on the material. But if your new musical’s saddled with a premise just asking for the title “Five Guys Named Schmuck,” you’re schmucked even before you’re out of the gate.

Now at the Tiffany, “The Gift” is a strange and wormy comedy-drama about five Northwestern University fraternity brothers who lose touch with their better instincts, but thanks to a shared sexually transmitted disease, they find them in time to reprise the title tune. Call it “‘It’s Always Fair Weather” with two extra guys and a disease.

Akin to the tyros of the Furth-Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” the characters include soulless movie mogul Don (Robert Torti, whose tan deserves separate billing), a man who has much but who cannot commit to his woman, an ex-studio intern named Toni (Shanola Gralyn Hampton).

Country singer-songwriter Travis (Barbour) has hit a dry spell. Highly cell-phoned and scrambling businessman Mark (Burke Moses) has acquired a mountain of debt. Washington Post journalist Lance (Larry Poindexter) lives an outwardly enviable life with wife, a child--and a closet that’s suffocating his sexuality. Teddy (John Kassir) likewise has a wife and child, and he isn’t sure he likes where he has landed.

Twelve years after graduation, these five reunite for Mark’s wedding. At the bachelor party, our host, bisexual stripper Elektra (stage newcomer Alicia Witt, of “Urban Legend”) does her thang, bodily fluids are transmitted--and the stripper turns out to be carrying a mysterious AIDS-like virus. Herewith is one meaning of the titular gift.

Another, according to lyricist-composer Steve Fox and his cousin, librettist Robbie Fox, refers to the gifts of life, and friends, and love. The writers manage the occasional zinger and some inoffensive middle-of-the-road balladry. Yet they haven’t cracked the essential question: How do we make people care about these characters, in this predicament? This is one musical unable to earn its heartfelt affirmative no-day-but-today ending. And why is the heart-of-gold stripper played by Witt, who looks truly uncomfortable in the striptease itself, hanging around delivering the lamest of transitional and scene-setting lines (“So there it is, Friday night, July 16 . . .”)? Why, other than to lend “The Gift” some long tall scenery?

The nine-person musical, staged by “Reefer Madness!” director Andy Fickman, wants us to like these pals for all their faults, no matter how loutish, insensitive and hackneyed their behavior. (The Foxes might’ve been better off ditching the sensitive stuff and going for broke in terms of black comedy.) As is, the characters’ collective experience--waiting for test results, re-bonding after all those years, examining lives focused on career--makes them all better human beings, in that unfortunate movie-fed way.

The score, played here by a four-piece combo, has its amiable moments, though the title tune isn’t among them. Make each moment last. . . . It’s a crazy world that none of us understands. . . . Fox’s weakest lyrics sound like a 17-car pileup on Homily Freeway.

There is, however, a brief, strong musical-within-a-musical in Act 1, thanks to Barbour’s portrait of the flailing country star. He may push the book scenes too far into Gomer territory, but Barbour rips into “How It Feels,” a decent I’m-in-trouble power soliloquy. For three, maybe four minutes, “The Gift” takes off, leaving the misjudged recipe of machismo and pathos far below.

* “The Gift,” Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 27. $35-$40. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Alicia Witt: Elektra

Burke Moses: Mark

James Barbour: Travis

John Kassir: Teddy

Larry Poindexter: Lance

Robert Torti: Don

Luann Aronson: Nurse/Sandra/Rachel/

Others

Harry S. Murphy: Mark’s Dad/Dr. Ross/

Alvin/Others

Shanola Gralyn Hampton: Toni/Sara/

Emily/Others

Book by Robbie Fox. Music, lyrics, orchestrations, vocal arrangements by Steve Fox. Directed by Andy Fickman. Scenic design by Bradley Kaye. Sound by Bernard Fox. Costumes by Dick Magnanti. Lighting by Rand Ryan. Musical director David Manning. Production stage manager Ritchard Druther.