‘The Cottage’ review: Tired new Broadway farce is forced

The poster of the new play “The Cottage,” which opened Monday night on Broadway, instantly suggests a severe identity crisis.

With exaggerated, colorful cartoons of its starry cast popping out of windows, the art of playwright Sandy Rustin’s comedy looks like that of the indie movie “Wet Hot American Summer.” 

The synopsis, meanwhile, reads as “Dry Old-Fashioned British Sex Farce.” 

The actual show, directed by Jason Alexander from “Seinfeld,” is both and neither.

A lowbrow-highbrow mashup isn’t the worst idea, granted, but here it translates to “Shout til it’s funny.”

The posh English accents are so high-pitched (not to mention questionable) that the production could star Alvin, Simon and Theodore.

And one of its biggest gags is an extended fart sound effect that would send Noel Coward sprinting for a gin bottle. 

What makes “The Cottage” habitable is its game and mostly charming actors, led by Eric McCormack of “Will & Grace” and “Legally Blonde: The Musical”’s Laura Bell Bundy, finally back on Broadway. 

The six performers yuk it up on a sturdy, lodgey, intricate set by Paul Tate dePoo III that has us longing for the days when such thoughtful scenery was the norm. 

Rustin’s irksome writing, though, was a flea in my ear. 

The gist, without revealing specifics, is that everybody is cheating on everybody else. 

In a 1923 English countryside abode, erudite Beau (Eric McCormack) and Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy) are not-so-classily getting it on, when gradually they’re intruded upon by Marjorie (Lilli Cooper), Clarke (Alex Moffat), Dierdre (Dana Steingold) and Richard (the role normally played by Neham Joshi was understudy Tony Roach on the night I saw it). 

The group is made up of husbands, wives, exes, secret lovers and, shall we say, secret professionals, all of whom have repressed desires and grievances to air.

What unravels is not so much a jolly farce of slamming doors and shocking surprises (there are a few), but a two-act parlor scene of admitted sexual indiscretions screamed so the bartenders at Sardi’s next door can follow along. 

You miss the old farces. There isn’t much of the hiding-in-closets fun that has long been the meat of similar comedies such as “Boeing-Boeing” and Coward’s “Present Laughter.”

That’s why the amped-up energy is so jarring — for the most part, these characters simply stand together and yell. 

That tried-and-true farce structure — low-key witty first act, madcap second, wrapup third — is abandoned by Rustin in favor of high-energy antics from start to finish, much like Broadway’s 2021 play “POTUS” that similarly ran out of gas halfway through.

Steingold, as the loopy Dierdre, runs away with “The Cottage.”

Her persona, with a voice somewhere between a ghost and a drunken bridesmaid, is hilarious. And Bundy as tart-tongued Sylvia reminds us of her Elle Woods comedic chops Broadway hasn’t experience enough of.

I only wish I was seeing them used for Elvira in “Blithe Spirit” instead.

Cooper, Moffat and McCormack fit in less effortlessly. 

Moffat, from “Saturday Night Live,” attempts a proud, loud Basil Fawlty with his official Clarke, but he’s not so much playing a character as a selection of broad traits. McCormack, ever a Will, settles on affable mode for Beau. And Cooper, who was moving as Nancy in City Center’s recent “Oliver!,” never nails the indifferent wife’s blasé sense of humor.

Roach, the understudy, turned out to be one of my favorites of the night because he gave an honest, un-showy performance underlining, in farce, the importance of being earnest.

The best bit of all, though, is a running joke involving cigarettes. It’s smart, collaborative and gets laughs every time. 

Tellingly, that physical prop gag is funnier than any one line of dialogue in this entire witless play.