Based on the hit movie of the same name, “Scoundrels” tells the tale of Lawrence Jameson, a suave, vaguely English con man (John Lithgow) who, with the aid of a corrupt chief of police (Gregory Jbara), has had an illustrious career bilking rich women like Muriel Eubanks (Joanna Gleason) out of their money on the French Riviera. His idyllic life is thrown into disarray with the appearance of Freddy Benson (Norbert Leo Butz), a distinctly down-market but nonetheless successful American version of Lawrence.

At first glance, the play seems to be about baseball’s (and therefore society’s) ambivalent attitudes towards homosexuality. When Darren Lemming, the studly African-American superstar of the Empires, a team that looks a lot like the Yankees, announces, for no particular reason, that he is gay, the revelation produces a fairly standard array of responses. Most people are accepting, in the currently politically correct manner, but more atavistic feelings seem to lurk just beneath the surface.

“Proof” is not without its merits. Auburn writes well and has created believable characters and some nicely turned dialog. Director Daniel Sullivan (ably assisted by John Lee Beatty’s smashing set) has turned a quartet of able performers into a finely tuned ensemble. Best of all, to my taste, is Ben Shenkman as the nerdy-suitor. Mary-Louise Parker seems to have been raised in the San Fernando Valley section of Chicago and she is perhaps a bit too drop-dead gorgeous for the role, but she manages the tricky task of being a believable focus for the play’s mock momentousness.

Meredith Willson’s endearing fable of the con man who comes to River City in search of easy money and finds redemption in the love of a local lass has been given riotous new life by protean director-choreographer Susan Strohman. Strohman’s other Broadway offering this year, “Contact,” won her the Tony, but “The Music Man,” for which she was also nominated, is the sentimental favorite.

At its best, Aida is so deliriously ghastly it is great fun to watch. At its worst it is embarrassing. Much of the time it is merely boring. Mr. John, who can write a catchy tune now and then, has risen to his level of incompetence to produce a sort of Mc-rock score and Mr. Rice follows suit with gratingly banal lyrics — although it must be said in his defense that Mr. John’s truncated musical lines didn’t give him much to work with. The book often manages bathos when it strives for drama and its humor is on a par with the best of today’s sitcoms (which is to say it’s pretty dreadful).