In his 12-season run as Sheldon Cooper on the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” Jim Parsons displayed a knack for dry humor and an awkward onscreen persona that seemed oblivious to social norms. It’s not hard to see why he might be drawn to Alfie Byrne, the closeted Dublin bus worker at the center of “A Man of No Importance,” the 2002 musical getting a kind-hearted but flat revival at Off Broadway’s Classic Stage Company.
Alfie is a quietly passionate fellow whose interests run from cooking to poetry to Oscar Wilde — not Sheldon’s field of theoretical physics.