Amber Gray, David Cross, and Matthew Broderick Photo by Marc J. Franklin

There are pleasures to be had with this Tartuffe, but most of them stem from the Molière original, along with an unusually starry cast for New York Theatre Workshop, if not an entirely well-selected or -directed one. Then there are Enver Chakartash's gobsmacking costumes, a cartoonish riot of colors and fabrics, and Raja Feather Kelly's modest choreography, which consists mostly of hoppity-skips during the scene changes. More about those odd scene changes a few paragraphs down.

You know the story, or if you don't, it's not a complicated one to tell: Orgon (David Cross), a successful but unusually stupid businessman, has fallen under the spell of Tartuffe (Matthew Broderick), a well-spoken charlatan who professes piety and goodness while taking Orgon for a ride and chasing every skirt in sight. His immediate goal is to snatch Mariane (Emily Davis), Orgon's daughter, from her fiancé Valère (Ikechukwu Ufomadu), a decent chap with an unfortunate gambling habit. But he's also after Orgon's wife Elmire (Amber Gray) and conniving to get Orgon to sign the deed to his house over to him. Commenting on the sidelines are Orgon's haughty mother, Mme. Pernelle (Bíanca Del Rio); his argumentative son, Damis (Ryan J. Haddad); Elmire's thoughtful brother, Cleante (Francis Jue); and Dorine, the household's pushy maid (Lisa Kron).

Quite a cast for East 4th, no? They're fun to watch, but disappointing on a few levels. Broderick's way of getting a laugh is to declaim Tartuffe's lies and hypocrisies in a light, singsongy voice. It works when he has a good line, but he needs more of them. We've seen him do these mild-mannered characterizations many times before, and he's not adding anything new here; it's almost a relief that he doesn't show up for 40 minutes.

And the acting styles, under Sarah Benson's uncertain direction, clash. Del Rio, done up in clown-white makeup, purple frills, and a Robert Pickens wig five miles tall, does high camp, flouncing about and chewing on consonants; she's funny, but she's in a different play. Kron, as that Molière staple, the sarcastic servant, is a relative breath of fresh air, punching up her dialogue like a common sense maid in a 1960s sitcom. Haddad, whom I'd enjoyed telling his own story in Hold Me in the Water, doesn't have a firm grip on Damis, alternately yelling his lines and fading into the background; he does, though, win the biggest laugh, emerging from a hiding place and admitting to having been "in the closet." Cross gets Orgon right, assertive but befuddled. Ufomadu is a strong supporting player who also excels in two additional small roles near the end. The rest, well, they're fine in an unprepossessing way; it's disappointing to see Jue, a recent Tony winner, stuck with such a useless role and doing so little with it.

Hnath has largely traded Molière's 17th century verbal frilleries for contemporary patter, and some of the time it works. Dorine, rebuffing Tartuffe's overtures: "How come this little bit of skin makes you feel you're about to sin, but if I saw your wrinkly buns I'd swear off men and join the nuns?" But we do sense how hard he's reaching for laughs, as with that closet line, and a surfeit of body-part jokes: "To touch your ass is no more crass than worshipping at Holy Mass." The Orgon-Tartuffe alliance gets so tight, with Tartuffe resting his head in Orgon's lap, you wonder if Hnath is aiming for a bromance vibe Molière never intended. And then those scene markers: Scenes end with a flash of light and a buzzer or bell, to some unfathomable purpose, and are punctuated with long pauses, unnecessary when dot's unit set doesn't need changing. Stacey Derosier's lighting design is otherwise adequate, and dots's work, essentially a wide frame of green walls with some furniture stuck about, at least doesn't distract from Chakartash's bold silks and paisleys.

Molière's verities about religious flummery endure, and the deus-ex-machina ending is still the satisfying culmination of what we'd like to see happen to anyone with a Bible in one hand and a bag of self-serving tricks in the other. I smiled through a lot of this Tartuffe. But with a more unified cast, stronger direction, less vulgarity–and, please God, better rhymes–it could have been a laff riot.