Run Extended Through July 13

 Woody’s [rating:4.5] 

To say Tony Kushner’s play about a dysfunctional Italian-American family in Brooklyn meanders is to miss the point.

And to say “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” runs a fast 3 hours, 45 minutes (including two intermissions) misses it, too.

What is the takeaway, then?

Like most of Kushner’s work, the complex three-act drama entrenched at the Berkeley Rep is brilliant.

Overflowing with passion and humor.

It’s a heady mosaic, a verbal choreography of truncated sentences and unfinished thoughts, with Kushner hell-bent on tackling a laundry list of philosophical conceits (even as characters simultaneously try to outshout one another, crisscross themes or become tongue-tied).

“The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…,” which the playwright originally planned as an epic novel, first opened as a tragicomic drama in 2009.

But, as with previous plays, the creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” was rewriting what his husband Mark Harris nicknamed “iHo” almost until the curtain went up.

The result?

The radiant West Coast premiere — replete with myriad subplots — probes love, parenting, familial relationships and money, not necessarily in that order.

And anyone brought up not to discuss sex, politics or religion is advised to stay away.

Director Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep’s artistic chieftain for 16 years, has collaborated with Kushner eight times (including the world premiere of “Angels”) and been a friend of his for four decades.

It shows.

When disillusioned Communist and retired intellectual longshoreman Gus Marcantonio announces he wants to commit suicide, his adult kids return to his brownstone with lovers and spouses to stop him.

Instead, they incite tumult.

Gus is portrayed by Mark Margolis, a “Breaking Bad” alum whose ability to let me (and the rest of the audience) share his character’s inner reality is remarkable.

Surrounding him — each displaying extraordinary acting chops — are Randy Danson as aunt Clio, a radicalized ex-nun; Lou Liberatore as Pill, Gus’ super-tormented gay history-teaching son; and Tyrone Mitchell Henderson as Paul, a theologian enraged by virtually everyone he encounters — as well as God.

Other major characters are Empty (Deirdre Lovejoy), Gus’ bisexual labor lawyer daughter; “V” or Vito (Joseph J. Parks), Gus’ son, a building contractor and the family’s “black sheep,” a capitalist; and Eli (Jordan Geiger), a lovesick hustler.

Incredibly, the entire ensemble cast of 11 is stellar.

They become figures that make Eugene O’Neill’s damaged characters tame by comparison.

“iHo” isn’t tidy, though.

Like other Kushner’s pieces, it’s occasionally self-indulgent.

He loves throwing in oblique references — from classic Horace to modern-day pop culture. And pithiness certainly isn’t his long suit, despite pearls like:

• “What’s real, the dream or the dreamer?”

• “The only real death is to live meaninglessly.”

Or, for laughs, “Yeah, baby, talk Commie talk to me.”

Did I “get” everything?

Hell no. Especially the more esoteric theological investigations.

I suspect a second, or fifth, viewing is necessary to grok all Kushner wants us to comprehend.

Taccone is skilled at interpreting Kushner — from putting the “isms” under a microscope, from contrasting labor unions to the union of individuals, from dissecting family dynamics.

He’s aided by scenic designer Christopher Barecca’s bi-level set, probably best described by an Ernest Hemingway title: “A Moveable Feast.”

Opening night, stage lights malfunctioned for a few moments. The distraction was significant, ironically, because it showed how impeccable the rest of the “iHo” production was.

The 14-word title, incidentally, pays homage to George Bernard Shaw’s economic exploration, “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism,” and Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures.”

Kushner has said he’s “always very happy being back at the Berkeley Rep, the only theater outside of New York where I truly feel at home, in the Bay Area, the only part of the world outside of New York I consider truly habitable.”

Although award panels have lauded him with two Tonys, three Obies and an Emmy, not everything he writes — despite endless attempts at perfectionism — is flawless, compelling, mesmerizing.

But he’s raised the level of American theater.

This version of “iHo,” I’m convinced deserves a rating of three brilliants and two dazzlings — or, for any who prefers the more familiar, six stars on a five-star chart.

“The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” plays at the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, through June 29. Tickets: $14.50 to $99, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.

Woody’s [rating:3.5]

Genius.

It’s defined as a person with exceptional creativity, originality or intellectual ability, especially in the arts or sciences.

Triple-threat American conductor-composer-pianist Leonard Bernstein certainly met that standard.

Over and over.

But Hershey Felder, a Canadian triple-threat himself (pianist, actor, director), depicts Bernstein in a new one-man show at the Berkeley Rep as a self-branded failure because he couldn’t compose music that might equal Beethoven’s.

Bernstein was in his own mind merely someone who’d be remembered for trivial melodies from Broadway’s “West Side Story.”

Felder approximates him, but doesn’t impersonate his finishing school speech patterns.

That’s good, because many in the audience — I, for one — recall boyish Lenny images from TV’s “Omnibus” and his Young People’s Concerts.

Felder instead fills the stage throughout his inelegantly titled mini-bio, “Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro,” with larger-than-life passion.

Plus equal doses of sadness and wit.

He smoothly ping-pongs between triumph and tragedy while honing the essences of multiple characters — including Bernstein’s ultra-Jewish parents and his Chilean actress wife (Felicia Cohn Montealegre, whom the bisexual Harvard grad deserted for a man, though he returned to comfort her when she was dying).

He shines while posing as American composer Aaron Copland, Bernstein friend and benefactor, and a string of European conductors who influenced him.

Felder also injects ooh-aah nuggets, like this recounting of a mentor’s instructions: “It was like watching God sculpt the Garden of Eden.”

The play’s a tour de force, for sure, likely to wring some wetness from your tear ducts — as it did from mine.

I saw Bernstein only once, with New York’s philharmonic, and Felder’s no Bernstein.

But he is a virtuoso pianist and a moving entertainer.

Poignantly lovely is his rendition of Bernstein’s “Somewhere,” which contrasts vividly with slivers of “Emperor Concerto” and other percussive Beethoven works.

Felder also mines brilliance from Copland’s “Piano Variations” and Bernstein compositions ranging from his derivative “Piano Sonata” to the raucous “I Hate Music” to the ethnically inspired “Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah.”

Stunning is a projected image of an operatic excerpt from Wagner’s “Liebestod” synchronized with Felder’s playing of the piece.

Accented by Bernstein’s words defending his acceptance of the German’s anti-Semitism.

But the show isn’t seamless.

The 100-minute, mostly chronological musical drama occasionally becomes a preachy master class not unlike one of Bernstein’s own teaching moments.

Too detailed. Too intricate. Definitely too pedantic.

It also has holes.

It gives short shrift, for instance, to Bernstein’s longtime leftist political activism (though it does capsulize the “radical chic” flap about his civil liberties fundraiser for Black Panther Party members).

Absent completely are Bernstein’s cigarettes (almost as omnipresent as his baton in real life), which led to his demise in 1990 at age 72.

After having battled emphysema for two decades.

No reference, either, to Bernstein founding the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, with Michael Tilson Thomas — a training school for musicians modeled on Tanglewood and still going strong (it’ll hold a 25th anniversary celebration from mid-July to mid-August).

But Felder, who previously tackled Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven in solo shows, exquisitely captures Bernstein’s arrogance.

And his insecurities.

And his scornful dismissal of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Judicious editing might help Felder jump-start the show, though.

It’s advantageous he doesn’t shy from the conductor’s gay meanderings or his lifelong immersion in Jewishness, but the over-emphasis on the latter heritage at the get-go is problematic — especially the massive infusion of Yiddish and Hebrew.

That said, it should also be noted that director Joel Zwick, helmsman of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” who’s collaborated on Felder’s earlier shows, skillfully guides the single-act play toward the standing ovation it warrants.

In rendering Bernstein, Felder, who’s married to an ex-Canadian prime minister 21 years his senior, Kim Campbell, isn’t as entertaining as he’d been in “George Gershwin Alone.”

Nor is his performance as riveting as the one by Mona Golabek in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” that he directed.

But his hard work researching, writing and acting pays big dividends on Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage.

Thomas Edison defined genius as “one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

When I use that yardstick, Felder’s evidently a genius.

“Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro” plays at the Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley, through June 22.  Tickets: $14.50 to $87, subject to change, (510) 647-2949 or www.berkeleyrep.org.