Excess of plot sinks a convoluted 'Third Story'

Your head may spin while trying to figure out the proceedings at off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre where the MCC Theater production opened Monday. Untangling the strands of this sporadically imaginative spoof requires a willingness to sit through reams of exposition waiting for the formidable Mr. Busch to make an appearance in drag.

Busch plays two roles — well, make that three if you count his portrayal of a laboratory-engineered clone of a female mobster named Queenie Bartlett. It's always fun to watch the performer play a tough-talking broad done up in the most ladylike fashions (credit costume designer Gregory Gale) and carefully coifed hair, in this case a tightly curled red wig by Tom Watson.

It's too bad Busch is not the total focus of attention here. This convoluted story is framed by a mother-son Hollywood scriptwriting team, played by Kathleen Turner and Jonathan Walker. The setting is Omaha, circa 1949, where the son has gone to get away from his grasping mother and start life anew as a mailman.

Ma wants them to collaborate on another project; the son objects, but soon their creative juices are flowing and coming to life on the Lortel stage. This is where things get messy, even though director Carl Andress has done his best to keep the strange goings-on as distinctly identifiable as possible.

One problem is the dreary, laugh-free banter between mother and son. Turner seems uncomfortable with the snappy give-and-take that is the hallmark of such Busch shows as "The Lady in Question" and "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom," which makes Walker work even harder.

The mother-son conflict gets another workout is the duo's own movie script, which comes to life. In it, Busch portrays the mob matriarch — with Walker again playing a rebellious offspring, now saddled with an ambitious girlfriend (Sarah Rafferty).

Then, for that taste of science fiction, add an overly neurotic doctor (Jennifer Van Dyck) who has perfected that cloning technique, and a weird creature named Zygote (a genuinely creepy Scott Parkinson) — apparently the results of one of the good doctor's misguided experiments.

And we haven't even gotten to Busch's third impersonation — an old Russian crone who's at the center of the budding Omaha postman's favorite fairy tale. It, too, ends up on stage.

You have to admire Busch's quick costume changes and the man certainly has an affection for old Hollywood, particularly the ladies who worked on- and off-screen. But this time around that love has been translated into an overly complicated theatrical valentine.