Off-Broadway gets the summertime blues

It's perilous to draw easy conclusions from this, but here goes:

On the basis of recent Off-Broadway openings, the mood of the summer is dark. In stark contrast to seasonal notions of straw-hat comedies and hot-weather frolics, much of the summer theater is as unsettled as the climate and almost as crabby as bulletins from Washington.

Even the plays in Central Park -- "All's Well That Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure" -- are two of Shakespeare's most unpleasant so-called comedies.

The Holocaust and 9/11 are the conflated focus of a Danny Aiello showcase called "The Shoemaker," while Orthodox Jews and gays face off on the Upper West Side in "A Strange and Separate People."

Yes, "All New People," the emotional farce that opened this week at Second Stage Theatre, takes place in an enviable beach house with airy ceilings and windows on the sea. But Zach Braff's play is dead-set in winter. And, despite the aggressive onslaught of jaunty jokes, we never forget the opening image of Charlie, the suicidal main character (Justin Bartha from both "Hangover" movies) on a chair with a long extension cord wrapped around his neck.

ALL NEW PEOPLE

Braff, best known as the star of "Scrubs," branched out in 2004 as writer and director of the well-regarded movie "Garden State." Over at Second Stage, we have fond memories of his intelligent turn last summer as the rich sad sack in "Trust."

"All New People," which has been given a slick and quick production by "Trust" director Peter DuBois, is Braff's debut as a playwright. Despite chunks of bright writing and a first-rate, four-person cast, the ideas are scattered, too many jokes are sitcom quips and the tone keeps jerking around so abruptly that Charlie could be strangled by just saying the lines.

Charlie has sought out the utter isolation of his rich buddy's beach house in off-season to kill himself, or so we are expected to believe. And, as we ultimately find out, he really has cause for being more than a mope in a shlumpy bathrobe.

Despite Bartha's skill, especially as a physical comedian, the revelation comes awfully late to anchor the character as someone beyond a scowl in a two-day beard.

His solitude is interrupted by Emma (Krysten Ritter), the motormouthed British gamin and would-be real-estate agent. She summons Myron (the exceptionally nuanced David Wilson Barnes), island drug dealer/fire chief. Then comes Kim (Anna Camp), the happy, high-priced hooker -- you know, the one so dumb she's smart?

Everyone has a really dark secret, told in flashback movies with cameos by S. Epatha Merkerson, Tony Goldwyn and Kevin Conway. Significantly, Braff's film snippets are the most mysterious and accomplished parts of this mild diversion that strives to be a seriocomedy but can't connect its heart and mind with its desperation to amuse.

A STRANGE AND SEPARATE PEOPLE

Braff teases us to wonder whether God sent these quirky people to save Charlie. In contrast, playwright Jon Marans hits the God questions directly in this three-character inquisition about the flexibility of religious traditions in Orthodox Judaism.

An openly gay, newly Orthodox young doctor (Noah Weisberg) shows up at the apartment of a pious couple with an autistic son. The doctor's pretense is to hire the wife (Tricia Paoluccio), an Orthodox caterer. The husband (Jonathan Hammond) is a psychologist who just happens to specialize in "same-sex attraction disorder."

Jeff Calhoun, ordinarily a director of musicals, finds surprising emotional grace with these fine actors and the simple production. But Marans, the versatile author of "The Temperamentals" (a gripping piece of gay history) and "Old Wicked Songs" (a 1996 Pulitzer finalist about a Viennese music teacher and his disturbed prodigy), has prematurely squashed a potentially big, rich story into a 90-minute box of character sketches. Too many emotional shortcuts make relationships implausible -- worse, foolish.

THE SHOEMAKER

"My sole is broken," says a film professor (Alma Cuervo) as she barges into the closed shop of a midtown shoemaker (played with seriousness and a bit too much melodrama by Danny Aiello).

At least, that's how the line reads in Susan Charlotte's script. Since we almost immediately recognize that the day is Sept. 11, however, we know we are meant to hear the word as "soul."

Shoes and family, Nazis and Islamic terrorists are mixed and matched in this well-meaning, ploddingly obvious drama, which Aiello believes in enough to have starred in a 2007 movie and, last summer, a one-act version. He plays an aging Jewish-Italian, who came to America when he was 9. His father and grandmother didn't make it.

Fathers and sons, fathers and daughters are the vehicles on which ideas of faith and world events are lugged around the shoemaker's persuasively lived-in -- but implausibly soundproof -- store. He has bonded with a young Wall Street executive (Lucy DeVito), whose high-heeled shoes will not be claimed.

Through the decades, artists have learned the difficulty of writing fiction about the Holocaust. Ten years after the World Trade Center collapse, honoring its reality will require more than this.

ALL NEW PEOPLE Second Stage Theatre, 305 W. 43rd St., $75; 212-246-4422; 2st.com

A STRANGE AND SEPARATE PEOPLE Theatre Row Studio Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St., $18. 212-239-6200; telecharge.com.

THE SHOEMAKER Acorn Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St. $66.25; 212-239-6200; telecharge.com.