BROCADE-17thC Venetian Comedy at Theater for the New City

The premiere of The Xoregos Performing Co.'s BROCADE, a 17th C Venetian comedy is playing at the Theater for the New City.  It's an original production by playwright/lyricist Robert DiNardo.   The play began on an interesting premise but with a convoluted & confusing plot.  It's not right to call it a musical comedy despite a little violin playing, ditties and alluding to seeing some diddies. The beguiling preamble in the program stated in Venice early 17 C "The city fathers believed that the sight of women's breasts could change the huge number of homosexuals living in Venice into becoming heterosexual. Therefore, they ordered whores to stand on a bridge, topless, now known as the Bridge of Tits."  Along with the warning to turn off cell phones was a notification there would be brief nudity on-stage.  Act I constructed a clever premise. A former whorehouse had been transformed into an orphanage accepting abandoned infants left (provided they were small enough to fit into the {drop-off} box.  A stealth talking Countess Felicita (Carla Lewis, who stumbled her lines) ran the orphanage with the aid of a young Novice (Sarah Kebede-Fiedler) who ubiquitously eave dropped (but little else).  A young man Orazio (Bennett Saltzman) adorned in a florescent, bejeweled gown carries an infant with him to the orphanage. Orazio was raised in the orphanage and now works as a seamstress for Felicita's sister Countess Bianca (Ethelyn Friend) creating garments for the town's harlots.  The 2 sisters love to gossip (regardless of being overheard).  There's startling news of the suspected return of Agostino (Gene Santarelli) Felicita's former lover.  Act I's most tender & distressing scene involves Orazio & his lover Mustat.  Mustat tells Orazio he was sold as a child by his father in Africa to his Venetian Aristocrat owner.  Mustat feared the facial/body scaring rituals and  at first was relieved to have saved his face not realizing he had given away his body and his soul.  The tenderness between the 2 lovers heightens the atrocities & indignities Mustat has born.  The play starts to unravel in Act II.   The play becomes a farcical love triangle but is strewn out of sorts with Act I.  BROCADE turns tarnished and jumbled and failed to adorn us with a well constructed period piece, comedy or drama.   Playwright DiNardo had several glimmering threads interwoven but the assembled getup was garbled.  Audience members became restless and ready to toss rotted vegetables at the troubadour and the pack of Pantaloons.