Tony Kushner's 'Homosexual's Guide'

Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-winning master of the form-busting, socially subversive, gorgeously written epic, was prescient about the collapse of the Soviet Union in "Angels in America" and anticipated our Afghan war with "Homebody/ Kabul."

So when he writes a conventional dysfunctional-family drama with relatives shouting at the same time around the dining-room table, trust him, they aren't yelling about supper.

For clues, the title of his first big work in almost a decade is "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures." In other words, Kushner only seems to be narrowing his focus to love and conflict in the old Brooklyn brownstone of a squabbling Italian family.

In fact, this rich but frustrating and beautiful mess of a play (directed by Michael Greif) wants us to think -- along with too many other things -- about the ideals and failures of the labor movement. Just as the country struggles anew with the legacy of unions, Kushner uses the familiar device of a family reunion to re-legitimatize debate about the nature of work.

A retired longshoreman (the magisterially shambling Michael Cristofer) has summoned his three adult children to agree to let him kill himself. His superficial reasons include memory lapses and a desire to give the profits from the sale of the house to his needy (for different reasons) kids. His real secret is both personally and universally damning.

This is a family that talks the way Kushner clearly wishes people would, quoting Marx and Horace, in Latin, laughing about obscure ecclesiastical theories, bickering with their lovers (and, in one case, hustler) about relationships and "commodity fetishism."

It's a pleasure to bounce around in Kushner's head again, even if, for the first time, his references sometimes feel more like name dropping than illumination. A bigger problem is that the academic gay son (the always compelling Stephen Spinella) is too shallow and irresponsible to carry so much of the story's weight.

In fact, despite wonderful work by Linda Emond as the labor-lawyer lesbian daughter, Steven Pasquale as the alienated construction-worker son and the delightfully dry Brenda Wehle as their radical ex-nun aunt, the most interesting characters are the gay siblings' partners (K. Todd Freeman and Danielle Skraastad. Coincidentally, both are sparky, unconventional theologians who talk very fast, as if afraid the brilliant and annoying family will drown them out. We sympathize.

WHAT "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures"

WHERE Public Theater, 25 Lafayette St.

INFO $75-$85; 212-967-7555; publictheater.org

BOTTOM LINE Rich but overstuffed new Kushner