Casanova Drops Some Coins in the Classical Jukebox Mozart meets "Mamma Mia!" Now that's a sentence I bet you never expected to read. Certainly, I never expected to write it. Having done so, I have to admit it was kind of fun, what with the quintuple alliteration and the promise of a musical concept so high that it feels stoned out of its mind. But that, I'm afraid, accounts for most of the pleasure I derived from "The Giacomo Variations," the haphazard hybrid of a show occupying City Center this weekend, with John Malkovich as its distracted-seeming star. This improbable production is defined by its creators as "a chamber opera play." But those of who us who wear our brows a bit lower, as we tend to on Broadway, might prefer to call it a jukebox musical, albeit with a classical playlist. The Giacomo of these variations is Giacomo Casanova, the 18th-century polymath whose name became a byword for he who sleeps with everything in skirts (and occasionally pants). Written and directed by Michael Sturminger, with music overseen by Martin Haselböck, "The Giacomo Variations" finds that old libertine (Mr. Malkovich) toward the lonely end of an exceedingly full life, writing the memoirs that would guarantee his immortality. Needless to say, he looks back in lust. Just as "Mamma Mia!" shoehorns in the songs of the Swedish pop group Abba to annotate the convolutions of a far-fetched plot, so does "The Giacomo Variations" use the hits of the platinum songwriting team Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist on some of Mozart's most famous operas. As performed here by the Orchester Wiener Akademie and the young opera singers Daniel Schmutzhard and Sophie Klussmann, these numbers, according to Mr. Sturminger's program notes, "create a very special kind of entry to Mozart's fantastic opera scenes, even for people who have no regular interest in classical music." Mamma mia, indeed, or should I say, "O dio!," in the manner of Da Ponte's love-fraught characters. You'll meet a lot of those folks during the two and a half hours of "The Giacomo Variations," though sometimes their names have been changed to match those in the memories being summoned by Giacomo. For example, when he recalls an encounter with a lovely girl who was disguised as a castrato, up pops Ms. Klussmann in breeches to deliver "Non son piu," the first aria sung by the impish page Cherubino, the trousers role in "The Marriage of Figaro." That opera's opening duet between Figaro and his betrothed, Susanna, is turned into what appears to be a phallus-measuring scene, sung by Mr. Schmutzhard, as Giacomo's young self, and Ms. Klussmann, as one of his conquests. Mr. Malkovich enlivens the action by handing a succession of increasingly large condoms to the lovers. The song in which the maid Despina pretends to be a doctor in "Così Fan Tutte" is used to ... Oh, never mind. You wouldn't believe me. As is to be expected, arias and set pieces from "Don Giovanni" figure prominently, including the catalog of lovers expounded by the valet Leporello. Like the Don, our Giacomo also leads a rousing chorus of "Viva la libertad!" and Mr. Malkovich, in a wispy and weathered voice, helps conclude the show with the window serenade. But as has often been noted by his biographers, Casanova was no Don Giovanni, whose conquests numbered in the thousands. For Giacomo, the number was, by his own count, a modest 120-something. And it is widely agreed by those who have made a study of him that Giacomo was far kinder to his lovers than was the manipulative Don Giovanni, for whom a woman was no more than a notch on his belt. For the record, the real Casanova is reported to have attended the Prague premiere of "Don Giovanni" in 1787 and, according to Mr. Sturminger, had "a close friendship" with Da Ponte. Is this the version of Casanova we see in "The Giacomo Variations"? To be honest, I haven't the foggiest. Mr. Sturminger's script, which extrapolates from, and embroiders on, the memoirs ("Histoire de Ma Vie"), is hardly a model of clear characterization. Much of it seems to take place in a Babel-like limbo that has no first language to call its own. You could argue that this befits a tale of the peripatetic Casanova, who became a man without a country. Mr. Malkovich - who memorably played another 18th-century womanizer in the 1988 film version of de Laclos's "Liaisons Dangereuses" - contributes to the impression by speaking in a plummy, variable accent that suggests someone who, though born on the continent, attended English boarding schools. He also exudes that vague state of impassioned indolence that is one of Mr. Malkovich's acting specialties. The four-member ensemble also includes the Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, who plays (I think) a visiting countess who may or may not be scheming to write her own unflattering biography of Casanova. Try to ferret a coherent plot out of "The Giacomo Variations," and you'll just wind up with a headache. Anyway, the point of the production appears to be less a matter of storytelling than of creating an impressionistic portrait of erotomania in the age of Enlightenment. The designers Renate Martin and Andreas Donhauser have created a set dominated by giant, Marie Antoinette-style dresses. Though theatergoers unfamiliar with Mozart or Casanova may be perplexed by much of this show, the implications of its characters" spending lots of time beneath those oversize skirts should be lost on no one. The Giacomo Variations Written and directed by Michael Sturminger; music concept and musical direction by Martin Haselböck; based on opera scenes by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte; stage manager, Christiane Lutz; stage and costume design by Renate Martin and Andreas Donhauser; art director's assistant, Natascha Maraval; executive director, Dean Kustra for Musikkonzept. Part of the Cherry Orchard Festival; at City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (800) 349-0021, cherryorchardfestival.org. Through Sunday. WITH: John Malkovich (Giacomo I), Daniel Schmutzhard (Giacomo II), Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Elisa I) and Sophie Klussmann (Elisa II).