STAGE REVIEW : THE ‘PAINS’ OF BEING IN THE MIDDLE

The suggestion lurking behind “Growing Pains,” the musical that opened Friday at the Westwood Playhouse, is that growing older is just as difficult as growing up. When the unoriginal notion is applied to arrested adolescents (which most of us are), it makes perfect sense. What it does not make is a perfect show.

It translates instead into a lukewarm drawing-room musical about middle-age crisis--an idea touched on if not directly tackled in Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” and “Merrily We Roll Along.” When the antagonists are painfully unexceptional middle-aged marrieds in a trite fit of middle-class marital boredom, it’s hard, somehow, to let one’s emotions slip over the edge.

Barbara (Teri Ralston) and Arnie (Peter Jason) have been married for 25 years. After the Kids, the House and the Affair (Arnie’s), all that’s left to pump new blood into the marriage is Separation with an eye to Divorce.

As you might expect, these two don’t get quite that far. First we see the Disintegration: Arnie drinking too much, driven home by his good buddy, the handsome health nut Roger (Craig Littler, in very good voice); Arnie and Barbara lamenting the death of mutual terms of endearment (“You Used to Call Me Baby”); tanned and healthy Arnie in the bathroom of his Encino ranch house unconvincingly bemoaning his fat (“Who’s That Old Man in the Mirror?”).

By the time we get to Barbara’s “Don’t Look at Me That Way,” we know it’s over. For now. Arnie moves out in search of “Young Girls” (a comic mini-ballet here, neatly choreographed by Joanne Divito), and Barbara’s momentary crisis of confidence gets a quick fix from Big-Hearted Friend Gloria. (Joy Garrett, a comedienne in the Carole Cook mode, who doesn’t quite make up in comic brass what she lacks in vocal blast.)

Act II is no less predictable, but it is a good deal funnier, hitting harder and better on some topical items in desperate need of spoofing.

“I Want to Be Jane Fonda” may not have a lot to do with this story (though compulsive aerobics are probably today’s answer to compulsive eating), but it’s a trendy number, clumsily directed by Jeremiah Morris, who doesn’t quite know where to put his people (here or elsewhere in the show) since the small stage is carved three ways by Gary Wissman’s revolving sets.

Arnie’s “Am I Having Fun?” is another step up for “Growing Pains,” with his dawning realization that young girls are perhaps not enough. The show’s best number, however, is the grand “Isn’t This Grand?,” a restaurant foursome with Roger, Barbara, Arnie, and Arnie’s girl of the moment Debbie (Brenda Dickenson) that starts out with embarrassed--and embarrassing--chitchat that unexpectedly soars to a humorous wine-tasting routine. The romp is short-lived though, and by the time the curtain comes down we’re back to wallowing in a foreseeable Hollywood happy ending.

Can one feel anything for these cliche-ridden, quasi-monosyllabic members of the South-of-Ventura upwardly mobile class? No.

For all its friendly/funny easy derogation about the Valley and its Valleyites, “Growing Pains,” which had a successful run at the Valley’s own Room for Theatre last summer, has not weathered the trip over the hills especially well.

It wants to be cute, heavy and palatable, but suffers from a terminal case of the shallows. The book by Joan Desberg Greenberg and Julius Wechter is a sort of Best of Toni Grant--predictable to its last, garishly sentimental gasp.

The capable Ralston tries to give Barbara what dignity she can (dazzle is not in the cards) and Jason is a sturdy, appealing Arnie.

Cissy Wechter’s lyrics are just this side of Hallmark and without surprises (her costume selection is much more effective), while Julius Wechter’s music is hummably unmemorable.

Eric Michael Gillett has a few nice touches as a savvy French waiter. Renee Gorsey, Cynthia Flippo, Michelle Zeitlin and Audrey Sperling are acceptable in a variety of cameos, with Sperling also taking on the vocal characterization of Barbara’s Jewish mother on the answering machine. The device is a steal from Wendy Wasserstein’s “Isn’t It Romantic” and not as funny.

Performances at 10886 LeConte Ave. in Westwood run Tuesday through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3, indefinitely (213) 410-1062 or (213) 208-5454.