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Paul Rudnick delivers a different holiday story, serving up biblical tales from a gay point of view.

As biblical revisionism goes, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told is way funnier than just about any other retelling of the Old Testament.

Usually, the stories of the world's creation, the great flood, Moses and his people in Egypt are moving, illuminating, spiritual, awe-inspiring. Seldom are they a laugh riot. And a gay laugh riot, at that.

The cast at the Rising Action Theatre in Oakland Park is donning (and doffing) its gay apparel for a holiday production that is most definitely not A Christmas Carol. Rudnick's Fabulous (which, at almost three hours, feels like one of the longest stories ever told) presents design and acting challenges for the company. But though this is in no way a knockout production, it delivers most of the bawdiness, laughs, tenderness and wry humor in Rudnick's 1998 script.

The all-powerful creator of Rudnick's universe is a Stage Manager (Linda Ellis) who sits near the action, calling cues and tossing in the occasional snarky comment. The occupants of this Eden are Adam (Larry Fields) and Steve (Ricardo Rodriguez), gay men who appear to have been created wearing dance belts. The two soon invent kissing, then sex, and once they're tossed out of the garden, they appear fully nude. (Just so you know you're not in for your standard Christmas pageant if you decide to see Fabulous.)

Soon the boys meet their lesbian counterparts, Jane (Martica De Cardenas) and Mabel (Emily Ocheltree). The four wander together through centuries of biblical history. They are tempted by various amorous animals on Noah's ark. In Egypt, they encounter a deadpan Pharaoh (Robert Tamayo) and his perky boyfriend Moses, aka Brad (Robert Graham). A very different living nativity scene (with Mabel as Mary and Jane standing in for Joseph) winds up the long first act.

Act Two is set in 1998 Manhattan, when AIDS drugs weren't as effective as many are now (yes, that's part of the plot, but a small part). Adam and Steve now share a Greenwich Village loft that has been fabulously decorated for Christmas/Hanukkah (the holiday-cheery set is by Douglas Grinn).

The guys are hosting a party where the guests include Mabel and a way pregnant Jane, a disabled lesbian rabbi (Kelly O'Sullivan) hired to marry the women, Adam's Mormon teaching assistant (Laura DeBenedetto) at a school so progressive that the kiddies have just put on a gay Christmas pageant, a pal who's working as a scantily clad go-go Christmas elf (Graham) and the droll Trey Pomfret (Tamayo), a racist yet somehow hilarious Santa.

Directed by Larry Brooks, Rising Action's Fabulous gets better as it unfolds, though a good edit wouldn't have hurt the sometimes-rambling script.

De Cardenas, who plays the self-described ''butch'' Jane, makes the most of the powerful monologue in which her cursing, ultimately moved character gives birth. Ocheltree is amusing as the flower-child, spiritually questing woman Jane loves. Rodriguez is a dashing Steve, though its hard to imagine him with Fields' Adam, who is played like a girly cliché. The dandiest supporting work comes from the deadpan Tamayo, drier than any of the many martinis Santa slurps.

Clearly, if a less-than-reverent gay treatment of biblical tales -- with nudity, no less -- would offend you, you should stay far away from The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told at Rising Action. More seats for everybody else.

I have to confess, I’m not sure where I stand on “gay marriage.”  Honestly, it’s a dysfunctional institution that isn’t really working for society. Marriage rates in this country are high, but so are divorce rates. The best I’ve been able to do—so far—is a three-year relationship and I shudder to think of the consequences if I had to “divorce” a guy when we parted ways. That said, I wasn’t sure how I would respond to Terrence McNally’s latest gay play, “Some Men,” which opened at Oakland Park’s Rising Action Theatre last week.

For several decades, McNally has been the theatrical voice of the gay community: as the writer of famous works such as “Corpus Christi,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “The Ritz” (recently re-launched on Broadway), his witty and often biting commentaries cover the AIDS epidemic, relationships, and now, gay marriage.  A present day gay marriage ceremony at the ritzy Waldorf Astoria serves as the bookends for  “Some Men,” which explores gay relationships through a series of disjointed vignettes covering nearly  eight decades.

The audience is taken in turn to a gay service member's funeral, a turn-of-the-century beach resort in the Hamptons, a gay bar during the Stonewall Riots, a Harlem nightclub in the 1930s, a group therapy session and a present-day Internet chat room. An ensemble cast of eight actors shifts gears between 47 different characters to offer commentary on the trials and tribulations of the status of gay relationships of the time.

In the end, McNally is a cheerleader for gay marriage, but he gives the audience much to ponder. In one scene, two older gay men in a long-term relationship are  interviewed by students in a gender studies class, and the men question the “activism” of the current generation and profess, “We didn’t have it so bad.” The idealistic students immediately reject the couple’s complicity with a society that upheld public stereotypes.

McNally also introduces a storyline that    follows a gay father and his lover as they deal with his gay son’s intentions to adopt a baby – another advancement in gay rights for which there is mixed enthusiasm both inside and outside the community.

In what is essentially an ensemble play, several cast members stand out as they smoothly shifted between roles: Larry Brooks and Larry Williams shine, as does Joseph Long, who stars in the Harlem scene, regretting “the man who got away.” Newcomer Ricardo Rodriguez makes an immediate impression, to say the least, baring all in the play’s gratuitous full frontal nude scene. And, of course, David Leddick, the colorful South Florida septuagenarian writer and actor, provides a bit of comic relief as the token “queen,” generating laughs as a man named “Buffed in Chelsea” in an internet chat room, and later as “Archie,” a fabulous drag queen who slinks around the stage in a fabulous red cocktail dress.

Rising Action’s artistic director, David Goldyn, has carved out a niche, offering up a season of gay-themed productions to the large Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale communities. While the quality of his productions has been uneven, Goldyn, along with his enthusiastic cast, put their hearts into this show and audiences rewarded them with lots of laughs and applause.