Ghostlight

There are few theatrical sights more dispiriting than watching a group of seriously talented, highly professional actors plowing their way through a rankly amateur show. As the increasingly enervating first act of the sumptuous feast of clichés that is "Ghostlight" stretched into eternity (well, not exactly, but it did run five minutes shy of two hours), I kept wondering when someone would stop and say, "Hold. Enough."

With book, music, lyrics, and direction by first-timers Matthew Martin and Tim Realbuto and choreography by newcomer Michael Kidney (who also serves as the show's company manager), there is no objective eye in the room to serve as a reality check on the show's excesses, which only begin with that ridiculous first-act running time. The story is based on the life of Olive Thomas, a Ziegfeld girl who was rumored to have had an affair with her boss, became a silent film star, married fellow star Jack Pickford (Mary's brother), partied exhaustively, died after mistakenly drinking poison, and now reputedly haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre. It's a colorful tale, to be sure, but not as told here in a succession of inept, overwrought, and often unmotivated scenes; poorly structured songs that are over long before they finish; far too many arbitrary and momentum-killing performance numbers; and a deadly earnest supernatural second act of supreme silliness. It's the kind of show in which the heroine sings, in all seriousness, that she wants to "learn to swim so I can drown." (Isn't that what you do to avoid such a fate?)

Trapped in this turkey are such fine performers as Michael Hayden (Ziegfeld), Rachel York (actor Billie Burke, aka Mrs. Ziegfeld), and Daisy Eagan (Molly Cook, a Follies girl and the heroine's best friend). They can't do much except keep going, but Hayden gives a master class in putting over a song when he sings the pedestrian soliloquy "Pictures and Numbers" with the same bravura, conviction, and commitment with which he once imbued Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Soliloquy" in "Carousel." Kimberly Faye Greenberg shows up as a caricatured Fanny Brice, and young Matt Leisy somehow maintains his sincerity as Pickford. The lovely Rachael Fogle has been plucked from obscurity to play the exhaustive central role, and they are lucky to have her.

The show takes place from 1914 to 1920, but you'd never know it from the composers' awkward attempts at pastiche, which are busy referencing the '20s and '30s, or their gauzy music for the book songs, which has virtually no connection to the era. The show's final lyric ends with the company singing "as the music plays on forever." Well, they got that right.

Presented by Everybody's Sweetheart Productions as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival at the Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space, 555 W. 42nd St., NYC. Sept. 28–Oct. 9. Remaining performances: Wed., Oct. 5, 5 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 7, 9 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 8, 5 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 9, 1 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.nymf.org.