Commedia dell’arte performers doing their thing in the HTC world premiere production of “The Miracle at Naples.”

The Miracle at Naples, a new comedy by David Grimm. Directed by Peter DuBois. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, through May 9, 2009.

Reviewed by Bill Marx

Is there such a thing as a Pyrrhic miracle? In the world premiere production of “The Miracle at Naples” at the Huntington Theatre Company, the troupe’s new artistic director Peter DuBois and playwright David Grimm reduce what was no doubt meant to be a cheeky homage to the venerable knockabout antics of commedia dell’arte into a wannabe stage equivalent of “Superbad” or “Dumb and Dumber.”

Along with a smattering of the latter film’s low IQ pratfalls, DuBois and Grimm crank out retread adolescent japes and one-track sex jokes familiar to ‘tween’ fans of the Judd Apatow oeuvre. The production raises a guilty snicker or two, but the proceedings end up more curdled than comic, eventually descending into middlebrow sentimentality and political correctness – after all the yuks about “perversity” comes the obligatory PSA.

Why coarsen the physical antics and earthy wit of commedia dell’arte with piles of one-liners about sex via “the back door”? The answer appears to be hope for a miracle in terms of who goes to the theater. The graying of the vanishing subscriber base continues: for marketers, theater’s growth will not depend on productions becoming leaner and smarter, more enterprisingly imaginative, or edgily reflective of contemporary realities. Instead, companies want to bring in the young by aping the success of movies, especially Hollywood blockbusters. Give the under-40 crowd what they fancy: gross out humor, double entendres clarified at Twitter speed, and a raunchy plot as broad and uncomplicated as a six-lane highway.

But is replacing the vanishing olde bedroom farce of the “Where’s My Wife?” variety with japes about masturbation and “watersports” really the way to the future? Attitudes toward sex have relaxed considerably in a generation that takes the ‘anything goes’ revelations of Facebook and YouTube for granted. Bourgeois nervousness about keeping up appearances while indulging its carnal appetites drove the engine of the traditional sex farce. Laughs came from the collision of two primal desires – to be respectable and illicit at the same time. What happens when the neighbors don’t give a damn?

In truth, “The Miracle at Naples” reflects the growing desperation of theater companies in a declining economy – expect to see more frenzied, misfiring efforts to draw in a younger crowd, productions that will be more patronizing than pleasurable. The competition among the purveyors of dumb/burlesque entertainment, often committed by highly paid experts (including twenty somethings themselves on Cable TV), is fierce — theater stands little chance of finishing in the big money in the race to the bottom.

Giancarlo (Alfredo Narciso) is receiving some no doubt bawdy advice from Don Bertolino Fortunato (Dick Latessa)

The bottom is where “The Miracle at Naples” starts off and scrapes from time to time. In Naples, circa 1580, a young hot-to-trot beauty, Flaminia, complains to her nurse, Francescina, that she needs some action. Francescina insists that virginity is essential for landing a respectable husband, yet offers Flaminia an alternative: anal intercourse leaves the hymen intact, so go to. (Why no mention of oral sex as well?) For the sake of the story, Francescina spends the rest of the evening trying to stop Flaminia from doing what she sensibly advises.

Meanwhile, a touring commedia dell’arte company comes to town: two of the clownish performers, Tristano and Matteo, armed with what they are told is an elixir of love, beds Flaminia via her “back door,” even though she would like to offer her “front door” to Giancarlo, an actor in the troupe who harbors illusions of poetic grandeur. The clash between Giancarlo and his rivals over the affections of Flaminia nudges the plot haplessly along, the comings and goings overseen by a statue of San Genarro.

The head of the troupe is the randy senior citizen, Fortunato, who knew Francescina in his childhood. Cue standard musings about the passing of time, of lust at twilight, and the end of traditions such as the commedia dell’arte, which is losing ground to the new-fangled playhouses. Given that Shakespeare will be writing for the theaters, and plentiful evidence of the mediocrity of Fortunato’s company in a predictable “play-within-the-play,” it is hard to shed many tears for the waning of commeda dell’arte, which has much more to fear from supposed helpers such as Grimm and DuBois. Fortunato’s sardonic daughter, La Piccola, whose small stature elicits too many cheap jokes, keeps the other members of the company on an even keel.

Director DuBois brings an irritatingly heavy hand to the low-rent farce, focusing on broad strokes and cartoon gestures rather than encouraging detailed comic characterizations and stage business that would bring adult nuance to the production. He and his performers mistakenly believe that the louder a line is shouted the funnier it is. As Fortunato, Dick Latessa provides some welcome moments of relaxed charm, putting some impish spin on his sub-burlesque lines – at one point, out of an overflow of high spirits, he breaks out into a funny little dance. It would take many more such moments of grace to save a show as wearyingly dumb as “The Miracle at Naples.”