There may be a biting comedy lurking somewhere in "Dying for It," but it's really hard to find it in this adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's "The Suicide."
British playwright Moira Buffini trimmed this Soviet satire's two dozen characters by roughly half and condensed the action into a single building, which set designer Walt Spangler's rendered as a lugubrious abode of peeling wallpaper and heavy, dark wood.
This is where Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) lives with his wife, Masha (Jeanine Serralles). Unemployed and depressed, sad-sack Semyon threatens to kill himself — a grand announcement that turns him into the center of attention.
"No other sermon I could preach would have more power to turn the wayward millions back to God," Father Yelpidy (Peter Maloney) tells Semyon. "Your suicide will fill my church."
As for Grand-Skubik (Robert Stanton), he wants to claim this "true Russian hero" for the intelligentsia. Daffy Kleopatra (Clea Lewis) is convinced the doomed Semyon is her one true love — in contrast to an earlier flame, who was "nothing but a penile imperialist."
Only in the prospect of death does this woeful proletarian — whom contemporary capitalists would call a total loser — become interesting.
Except Semyon can't even pull off his suicide. Farcical shenanigans ensue.
Or they would, if Neil Pepe's production had any pep. But the pace is sluggish, and the cast struggles with the stilted, period-ish dialogue. The usually sharp Serralles ("The Maids") is weirdly shrill, and even stalwart Mary Beth Peil (of TV's "The Good Wife") hardly registers as Masha's mother.
Worse, the actors feel disconnected from each other, and there's no sense that they're part of an ensemble.
During early readings of "The Suicide," Communist muckety-mucks saw it as a critique of the new Soviet republic and blocked its opening — for decades, as it turned out. Watching this show, you can only wonder what freaked them out so much.
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