Downtown and Broadway aren’t the most comfortable mix, but Larry Keigwin is a club kid who’s a chorus boy at heart. His new “EXIT,” which opened Tuesday, takes downtown’s clubs uptown, but sanitized and with glitter and sparkles.
The setting is a dark, bare club with a single door at the back. Jerome Begin, armed with a mixer and a keyboard, acts as both co-composer and deejay. The three women in the cast are in corsets and sequins; the four guys start in ripped jeans and tight shirts. There are a lot of costume changes and a lot of skin.
For a little more than an hour, with no intermission, we’re spying on a decadent night out. Couples — gay and straight — form and fight.
The night wears on to a tantalizingly inconclusive end. The dancers come toward us, half-smiling, almost as if in a trance. One man leaves through the door — but we’ll never know exactly why.
Keigwin’s tale is best at its most unsettling. After a brawling, drunken duet, one man lays another on the floor, then — almost as an afterthought — spits on him and leaves.
A woman enters and idly flicks her cigarette ash over the body.
The best laughs in the piece are also uncomfortable. One guy strips down to a black jock and white high heels, teetering about while lip-syncing to Sinatra’s “I’ve Got To Be Me.” But for all the outré sexuality, the show is Broadway wholesome.
All the men have perfect bodies: No skinny junkies in this club. And apart from one girl-on-girl moment in passing, there are no lesbians, either.
Keigwin’s at home in musical theater: He’s working on productions of “Tales of the City” and “Rent.” “EXIT” pushes for more honesty and depth than usual from this Broadway baby, but all the same, Keigwin doesn’t have a new take on Clubland.


