‘Bob’ at Azuka Theatre: A flat tire on the road to ‘greatness’

Bob: A Life in Five Acts, a twee travelogue receiving its local premiere from Azuka Theatre through March 17, runs out of gas long before reaching its destination. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s exploration of American myth-making considers a question that has long fascinated writers — what does it mean to be a great man? — but it too often seems awash in its own imagined cleverness.

Michael Osinski’s hyperactive production, performed by a cranked-up cast of college-age actors, shares that sense of trying too hard.

Nachtrieb chronicles the title character (Paul Harrold) from birth to death, imparting heavy-handed lessons on integrity, hubris, and redemption along the way. Bob’s teenage mother (Claris Park) births him on a White Castle bathroom floor, cutting the umbilical cord with a Swiss Army knife. Restaurant employee Janine (Sabriaya Shipley) adopts him — some would call it kidnapping — and spirits him across the United States in her beat-up Chevy before expiring on the steps of Chicago’s Art Institute.

Homelessness and adversity give way to wealth and isolation, as Bob morphs into a Howard Hughes-level billionaire recluse (complete with jars of his own urine). He ends his days as a folk hero, with fables eclipsing the facts of his life.

The play aspires to the stature of a classic Bildungsroman, right down to the cloying epigrams that summarize each section. (Example: “How Bob has a turn of luck, becomes a new man, achieves a false dream, meets an important woman and is redeemed.”) Yet the tone and style end up closer to comic book panels, garishly colored and oversimplified. Nachtrieb never lingers inside a moment long enough to imbue it with real feeling. He seems content to sink any potential pathos with a crass joke.

Janine’s death serves as a prime example of the clash between intent and execution. A flicker of genuine emotion lurks beneath the scene: On the verge of abandonment once more, Bob clings to the only person he loves. Harrold attempts to convey the unspoken sorrow in the loss, but the script undercuts it with a lame gag about underwear. It’s as incomprehensible as it is unfunny.

When Nachtrieb writes himself into a corner, he inserts improbable dance breaks. The four-person chorus (Park, Shipley, Frank Jimenez, and Dan D’Albis) bump and grind to Lady Gaga and Mary J. Blige, among other pop luminaries, creating an act of spectatorship that resembles American Idol auditions at their most cringeworthy.

Indeed, I cringed so often at the attempted humor I eventually lost count. The second act brings crude cracks about Lou Gehrig’s disease and a bowling alley named for Malcolm X, and any remaining hope for subtlety or wit flies out the car window faster than a flicked cigarette butt.

Ultimately, it matters little. Bob leads its audience down a road to nowhere.

Through March 17 at Azuka Theatre. Proscenium Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St. Tickets: Pay what you decide. Information: 215-563-1100, azukatheatre.org.