Village vanguard? Bill Dawes and Autumn Dornfeld in The Beebo Brinker Chronicles Dixie Sheridan The Beebo Brinker Chronicles By Linda S. Chapman and Kate Moira Ryan Based on the novels of Ann Bannon The Fourth Street Theatre 83 East 4th Street 212-352-3101 more theater most popular most commented Stitching: Mission Abort by Alexis Soloski Palace of the End: Leash Fatigue by Alexis Soloski The Flat Earth Glows Sightlines by McCann, Ruth Bash'd!: Rap, Now Even Gayer Sightlines by ROB KENDT Misha Shulman's Brunch at the Luthers Sightlines by GARRETT EISLER Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (15) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

The novels track the Greenwich Village amours of butch Beebo (Anna Foss Wilson), femme Laura (Marin Ireland), gay Jack (David Greenspan), and Laura's college love Beth (Autumn Dornfeld), now lost to marriage. In an interview with The New York Times, the play's director, Leigh Silverman, insisted she wouldn't aim for the outré or kitsch: "It felt to me the audience would feel more delight the straighter we play it, so to speak." But despite these excellent intentions, the shoehorning of 600 plot-heavy pages into 90 minutes makes for an overheated, if enjoyable, evening. The playwrights' version insists that Laura is nearly always hysterical, Beth always in a marital spat, Jack and Beebo ever ready with a quip or a come-on.

If Bannon won praise for resisting homosexual stereotypes and crafting nuanced characters, the play somewhat reverses this trend. Most of the actors attempt a degree of naturalism, but lines such as "They're not ladies, they're lezzies" make it difficult. (Carolyn Baeumler, playing three busty vamps, hasn't received the "anti-camp" directive and has terrific fun.) Rachel Hauck's simple set and Nicole Pearce's shadowy lights are spare and tidy, while Theresa Squire's droll costumes—featuring Easter-egg-colored slips—are much more exuberant. If The Beebo Brinker Chronicles doesn't succeed in playing it straight, its fervid portrait of the '50s Village does offer a gay old time.