David Mamet's "Romance," directed by David Farmer for The Actors' Group, feels disoriented. It's as if Groucho Marx in judges' robes has somehow taken possession of the playwright who created "Glengarry Glen Ross" and produced an absurdist bad dream in the shape of a courtroom farce.

While attorneys bicker, the judge overmedicates — falling asleep in Act One and stripping down to his underwear in Act Two. The expletive-repeated dialogue insults Jews, Christians, homosexuals and Shakespeare, while world leaders let peace talks slip through their fingers.

Unfortunately, this 2005 play is not Mamet at his best, and the production demonstrates that everybody can enjoy a good farce, but that it's especially hard to create one. Most of the characters in this all-male cast carry their roles as uncomfortably as they wear their dark suits.

Since we can't have Groucho or John Mahoney (the TV father in "Frasier," who created the role in the original Chicago production), we're apt to be hard on Stu Hirayama, who pilots the role through an especially choppy and long first scene. But Hirayama recoups in Act Two, when the action turns markedly absurd, and the judge goes deliriously haywire.

The play's second act is fast and ridiculous. While you need the first act to establish the characters and the relationships, it sputters along without igniting.

Thomas Smith and Kevin Agtarap, as opposing lawyers, deliver their lines like they were deciphering indistinct cue cards. Maseeh Ganjali disappears into his role as Defendant — a chiropractor convinced that the key to world peace lies in a simple adjustment of the fifth vertebra.

The play offers several opportunities for comic bits: The judge sneezing to a roomwide chorus of "God Bless You"; the evasive defendant refusing to acknowledge his signature; and the prolonged debate over whether Shakespeare was a "Jew" or a "fag." But Mamet doesn't connect the isolated dots to shape the vaudeville turns into a unified whole.

The most successful physical comedy comes from D. Omar Williams, as the Proscecutor's gay boyfriend, and Larry Fukumoto, as the droll, understated Bailiff. Williams is blatant as he gratuitously displays his bikinied derriere while searching for lost contact lenses. Fukumoto is slyly subtle as he makes quiet grabs for the judge's pillbox.

The play reaches its over-the-top climax with each character competing to confess his own worst sexual behavior.

Unfortunately, the exaggerated farce is not funny.

Worse, it hasn't been consistently funny for most of the show's two acts. But at least we're back on the street in under two hours.