Act II

Sexaholix . . . A True Love Story Time and fatherhood have softened the edges of John Leguizamo’s oversexed-freak shtick. Here, he has moved a nightclub standup routine onto the boards of a large stage, and, despite Leguizamo’s attempts to fill the space with nonstop movement and a brief trip to the aisles, the venue swallows up his personal rapport with the audience while magnifying his pandering instincts. In the show (a version of which previewed in L.A. at the Wiltern last year), Leguizamo talks a lot about family, girlfriends and pot, and, despite an abundance of four-letter words and scatological discourses, serves up an unexpectedly cuddly, suburban-safe monologue. Leguizamo’s reminiscences about Queens, his teen street pals and the well-traveled waitress who initiated him into a boudoir apprenticeship have moments of wit but ultimately sound imported from the Catskills; worse, Act 2 anecdotes about his two kids turn Leguizamo into yet another parent forcing the family photo album on a trapped listener. Leaving this one-man show, you feel that Leguizamo could have been America’s next Lenny Bruce but has chosen to be its new Jackie Mason instead. Royale Theater, 242 W. 45th St.; indef. (212) 239-6200.

[sic] Melissa James Gibson’s three-character play has become one of the first big post-9/11 hits, a disjointed look at three ur-slacker neighbors — two men (one straight, one gay) and a put-upon woman who keeps using the others for various favors. There are some funny situations and deadpan lines delivered in a jagged staccato (“If you can spell bourgeois, then you’re bourgeois”), and the cast does a good job delineating the three personalities, often playing inside the phone-booth confines of their apartment rooms, which are placed, like upended shoeboxes, side by side. (Below them is another, larger apartment that only occasionally flickers to life and is inhabited by an estranged couple — an enigmatic touch shrewdly exploited by director Daniel Aukin.) Before long, however, it’s apparent that Gibson regards her characters as little more than sock puppets and that the wispy, episodic plot merely exists to remind us of their names. [sic]only seems deeper than its stage and really should be a much shorter segment of an evening of other sock-puppet apartment-life one-acts. Soho Repertory, 46 Walker St.; thru January 18. (212) 206-1515.