STAGE REVIEW : A Brain-Dead ‘Want It Wednesday’ : The production at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center lacks humor and originality in its attempt to satirize the television industry.

“I Want It Wednesday,” the new play at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center through Sunday, takes its title from an old Hollywood line that might have been coined by any number of harried shlockmeisters: “I don’t want it good. I want it Wednesday.”

In this brain-dead production, which purports to satirize the television industry, that line passes for the sort of witticism that is supposed to sound fresh. But the entire script of “I Want It Wednesday” is so stale it would be lousy any day of the week.

Could there possibly be anything more dated than jokes about Mr. T and “The A-Team”? Or about a movie-of-the-week “to star the Dallas Cowgirls and the Chippendale dancers”? Could there be a more antediluvian cliche than the central figure of this comedy: a blowhard TV producer whose ditsy wife drinks too much, shops too much and owns a losing racehorse named Zsa Zsa.

This play not only wastes what little energy it has on characters who are brainstorming a prime-time soap called “Sugar”--Jack Lord as plantation patriarch would head an incestuous family of Hawaii sugar tycoons--but also devotes most of the second act to a game-show parody called “The $64-Million Question.”

Little wonder that the playwright Lew Riley does not want to be associated with this fossil and has asked the producer-director Jeffrey D. Ault to take his name off it.

Riley has written The Times that Ault’s staging bears “only a passing resemblance to my copyrighted script” because of wholesale changes made without his authorization.

For his part, Ault has refused to comply. He has issued a press release claiming that he “sees no justification” for removing Riley’s name.

Ault insists that, despite their “artistic differences” over casting and “dialogue that has been added to the original script . . . through improvisational exercises,” he has remained faithful to Riley’s intent.

Regardless of who might be right, the staged material of “I Want It Wednesday” seems beyond redemption.

If Riley’s script bears just an iota of resemblance to the production, which is more than likely, he ought to burn it.

Meanwhile, that doesn’t leave much room for amateur performers to distinguish themselves. And, to be sure, they don’t. But Carla Jones, who has the most theatrical role as the TV producer’s wife, does manage a not-bad impersonation of a drunk.

‘I WANT IT WEDNESDAY’

A co-production of Illusion Entertainment and Center Stage Productions. Based on an idea by Lew Riley. Produced and directed by Jeffrey D. Ault. Associate director Dan Halkyard. Technical director Walter Brown. With Renee Basford, Steven Scholl, Jeff Coplen, Thomas Bergman, Cathaleen Irons, Randy Lord, Carla Jones, Dawn Notarianni, Monica Suter. Through Sunday at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, 931 N. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Tickets: $10. (714) 531-6766.