A FREE MAN OF COLOR A REVUE

It seems that I am beginning to sound like a broken record but a good idea for an exciting and worthwhile play has not worked out and even with a colorful background and a vibrant central character John Guare's latest play " A FREE MAN OF COLOR" is [sad to say] a pretentious bore.
Mr. Guare has written some wonderful plays about the human condition ["The House Of Blue Leaves" and "Six Degrees Of Seperation"] and his latest is set in New Orleans right before the Louisiana Purchase happened and law and order took hold. The time is 1801 and the plot revolves around a Don Juan who is a master seducer and the richest man in New Orleans. He is also a free man of color at a time when class division was common.
It's good idea but it is woefully overwritten, overpopulated and overproduced and George C. Wolfe's stage direction seems needlessly busy and and sometimes static, and Hope Clarke has provided some minor dance movement that could have been done away with and not at all missed.
The twenty six member cast works hard but seem ill at ease with the stilted dialog and situations and David Rockwell's sets are colorful but over-elaborate and they are well served by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's lighting, but "A FREE MAN OF COLOR " is another case of a colorful and lively story drowning in a sea of excesses, and it ends up being a dull, lifeless and static play.
AT THE VIVIAN BEAUMONT THEATER LINCOLN CENTER N.Y.C.