The program notes for Little Theatre of Norfolk's production of Breaking Legs contain passages in which novice director Malcolm McCutcheon talks about his love for Tom Dulack's script: and where he thanks the board of LTN for allowing the play as part of their season despite its language, violence, and sexual content.  I have to admit I had high expectations for the script.  Years ago, in college, I read a remarkable play by Tom Dulack called Incommunicado, which dealt with the poet Ezra Pound's imprisonment by U.S. forces after World War II for his role as an Axis propagandist.  That play was a revelation.  Breaking Legs is not.  As a matter of fact, as I left LTN on Friday night I was left with one overwhelming question:  Why?

I don't understand Mr. McCutcheon's assertion that this play is too subversive for LTN.  Sure, there are a couple of F-bombs, a "sexy" scene (which is played for laughs), and a pithy and limply staged scene of violence.  But then, I am not sure whether LTN and Mr. McCutcheon have played it safe to appease the subscriber base.  No matter.  The opening night audience seemed to hold the show in very high regard.  I was nonplussed.     

The plot, so far as I can tell, involves a playwright named Terence O'Keefe (Robin Chapman) who has come to see Lou Graziano (Richard May), the mafioso father of Angie (Catherine Gendell), a former student of his with whom he had a brief flirtation.  He has written a play he would like to have produced off-off Broadway, and he believes Lou may be able to bankroll the show.  Lou and his colleagues Mike Francisco (Dale Payne) and Tino De Felice (Augustus Allen II) agree to bankroll the show, but decide to sink more money in it to make it a full-fledged Broadway production.  Terence is pleased with this, and resumes his flirtation with Lou's daughter Angie.  In the middle, a small-time hood named Frankie (Vincent DeSanto) is meted out some underworld justice by the ragtag bunch of lovable mobsters.  Terence witnesses the violence.  We are told he is frightened, but that's not discernable: A man frightened of a mob boss does not take his money, and he certainly doesn't bed his daughter. Terence does though, and agrees to have the mobsters produce his play.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.  There is no conflict to speak of, and I could not tell you who was the protagonist or who was the antagonist. 

When the play broke for intermission I wasn't sure why I was supposed to want to come back.

Much of the staging seems busy and arbitrary.  Actors enter and seldom stop moving (Ms. Gendell is the worst culprit).  I prayed for a moment of stillness through the first half of Act One.  This didn't arrive until the scene mentioned above, where the stillness lasted too long, and the dialogue did not pop enough to merit such a long period of inactivity.  Too often characters would move from the banquette stage right to a small bistro table stage left for no discernable purpose other than to clarify the stage picture.    By and large, however, he has done an adequate job for a greenhorn director and Mr. McCutcheon should sleep better tonight knowing that the major problems here are largely Mr. Dulack's fault and not his.  I hope Mr. McCutcheon will continue to direct in the future.  More experience may weed out some of these problems. 

The most solidly professional person onstage is Ms. Gendell as Angie, although her almost compulsive blocking and stage business make her seem less experienced than I know her to be.  Her performance of Angie is just right however.  From her accent to her nouveau riche air she is perfect, and

Ms. Gendell herself is a striking and beautiful woman who is believable as either a mobster's daughter or his comare.

Matt Gorris's set design is very nice, and well rendered.  The setting of the play is the back room of an Italian restaurant which is rented for private parties, but is largely the place where Mr. Graziano and his associates conduct their affairs.  Mr. Gorris's set seems more like the main dining room than the back room, but this may be because of the presence of two entrances and exits, a door stage left that goes to the kitchen(?), and a set of glass french doors upstage that go to the rest of the restaurant(?).  I was reminded of that old adage that a cowboy never keeps his back to the door.  I feel that mobsters may have a similar philosophy and the set allows an availability of access that belies the characters' natures.  The space is well-used, however, and the set  is very attractive. 

The biggest disappointment here is in David Burton's costumes.  Breaking Legs is set in the mid-1980's, and when dealing with the arriviste criminal element, particularly in such a garish decade for fashion, there is a great opportunity to exploit the really gaudy bearing of the Mafia of that period.  Ms. Gendell's Angie was played just right, but she looked all wrong.  While her outfits implied a sleazy Jersey girl aura, they just as easily could have been tasteful business wear from the actress's own closet.  Where was the gaudy jewelry?  Where were the dresses so short she had to keep pulling them down?  Why wasn't her hair ratted and teased to an insurmountable height?  Why were the mobsters in blase suits the whole time?  Where were the velour track suits?  I understand that these theatres operate on meager budgets, and period is difficult to do on the cheap, but Mr. Burton seems to have completely missed the point.  The costumes for Mr. Payne's Mike Francisco (chest hair, gold chains) come close, although there is more than a hint of the 1970's in them.  It is Mr. DeSanto's Frankie whose leather jacket and turquoise pants combo are the funniest and most period appropriate.  The other characters, much like Ms. Gendell seem to have their sensibility more grounded in the contemporary mob world of The Sopranos than anything having to do with the 1980's, and it is a missed opportunity.