THEATER REVIEW : ‘Aspects of Love’ Fit for a Soap Opera : The latest musical scored by Andrew Lloyd Webber to hit town is overwrought, over-embroidered and often silly.

Call it a case of serious identity crisis, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s curious “Aspects of Love,” which opened Thursday at the Wilshire Theatre, tries for one thing and achieves another. Nearly always.

Signs of trouble were already visible in Trevor Nunn’s original 1989 London production. But that one, at least, had a massive, brooding set by Maria Bjornson (the designer of “Phantom of the Opera”) that put the show at a certain remove and gave it a certain chic and sweeping grandeur that matched the romantic explosions of Lloyd Webber’s Italianate score.

But the new edition that has landed at the Wilshire, staged by Canada’s Robin Phillips, is a far more tremulous affair. Diaphanous and creamy, it recklessly enlarges the things it ought to suppress.

“Aspects” is definitely Lloyd Webber’s non extravaganza and most divergent piece. Based on the 1955 novel by David Garnett, which is loosely modeled on the lifestyle of London’s Bloomsbury set, it traces the amours of French actress Rose Vibert (Sarah Brightman) from 1947 to ‘64--starting with her fling with a young admirer, Alex Dillingham (Ron Bohmer), a lad of 17 who sweeps her off her feet (in this production, literally, and too often).

Rose is several years his senior and what started as a two-week “thing” at his uncle’s estate in France turns into a lifetime association when she abandons Alex--why she does is never made clear--in favor of that uncle.

Uncle George (Barrie Ingham) is an older, worldly artist and womanizer, whom Rose decides to marry. If she continues to have lovers on the side, so does George, whose longstanding liaison with Italian sculptor Giulietta (Kelli James Chase) becomes a menage a trois when Rose and Giulietta discover they, too, like each other.

Rose and George have a daughter, Jenny, and when Alex re-enters the picture after years in some foreign war--heaven knows which--it is Jenny’s turn to develop a crush on Alex--much to her doting father’s dismay.

And so it goes. Everybody loves everybody with remarkable tolerance and equanimity. Too remarkable. Jenny (played as a child by Maryke Hendrikse and as a blossoming teen-ager by graceful Dana Lynn Caruso) is the musical’s most human creation and the source of its only genuine moments. The only time we are profoundly moved is when she dances her first dance, first with her father, then with Alex (in the tender “The First Man You Remember”).

That number and “Falling,” a vibrant quartet sung by George, Rose, Alex and Jenny, which extrapolates what falling in love means to each of them, are the highlights of this odd, overwrought, over-embroidered and often silly piece.

Ingham as George is the only performer other than Caruso who brings a human dimension to his character. George is suave and dashing but quite real.

Brightman and Bohmer sing like gods but neither is much of an actor. They substitute attitude for emotion with sometimes unintended results. A final scene in which they take turns bending over in anguish looks as if they’ve been hit by food-poisoning. And designer Ann Curtis’ determination to show Brightman off in a variety of scant camisoles takes on the look of an ad for Frederick’s of Hollywood. Is this the Ken and Barbie musical? The rest of Curtis’ costumes are ornate but more elegant.

Philip Silver’s gauzy walls of filmy white drape suggest a fantasy context too benign for the hot passions at play. It’s not a beige world. And whatever flourishes Lloyd Webber may have missed, director Phillips has put in, going after every clinch and cliche.

Wanting to be ardent and dramatic, his production is ardently melodramatic. Wanting to be operatic, it is soap operatic. Wanting to be transcendent, it is transcendently sentimental. And wanting to be grand, it is just grandiloquent.

The piece may be set in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but its sensibilities are Harlequin Romance Victorian, aided and abetted by the most simpering lyrics in memory (written by Don Black and Charles Hart). Words such as “Life goes on, so must we” just don’t cut it.

Lloyd Webber is much better off when he sticks to being playful with such whiz-bang shows as “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Starlight Express.” “Aspects of Love,” especially shorn, as it is here, of all restraint, is maudlin nonsense. It’s an aspect of the composer better left unseen.

A footnote: Linda Balgord, who created the role of Rose in Canada, is Brightman’s alternate in Los Angeles and will perform all Thursday and Sunday shows.

“Aspects of Love,” Wilshire Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Matinees Saturdays 2 p.m. Ends March 28. $20-$50; (213) 480-3232, (714) 740-2000. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Sarah Brightman: Rose Vibert

Ron Bohmer: Alex Dillingham

Barrie Ingham: George Dillingham

Kelli James Chase: Giulietta Trapani

David Masenheimer: Marcel Richard

Maryke Hendrikse: Young Jenny

Dana Lynn Caruso: Older Jenny

Suzanne Briar; George’s Housekeeper

Stephen Foster: Hugo

David Chaney: Gardener

A Los Angeles Civic Light Opera presentation of a Livent Inc. production, in association with the Really Useful Theatre Company (Canada) Limited, based on a novel by David Garnett. Director Robin Phillips. Book adaptation and music Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics Don Black, Charles Hart. Sets Philip Silver. Lights Louise Guinand. Costumes Ann Curtis. Sound Martin Levan. Choreographer Anne Allan. Executive music supervisor/conductor Michael Reed. Orchestrations David Cullen, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Larry Wilcox. Technical director Don Finlayson. Production stage manager Randall Whitescarver.