Flops Find Rest in ‘Grave White Way’

Writing a musical about bad musicals is like tempting fate. Joe Patrick Ward’s revue about imaginary bad musicals, “The Grave White Way,” at the Hudson Backstage Theatre, is burdened by too many clunkers and lead-footed transitions that often detour into wild tangents of unnecessary character development.

Five dead musical stage actors (Craig A. Curtis, Joshua Finkel, Lesli Margherita, Amy Rutberg and Shannon Stoeke) attempt to gain admittance into Musical Theatre Heaven by performing a revue of flop musicals that condemned them to the musical theater purgatory known as the Grave White Way. One of the composers (Ward) of these melodic blights accompanies them on piano.

Ward packs this with plenty of groan-worthy lines, and a few musical interludes are clever. Margherita’s sexpot Lindsey as Lizzie Borden is hysterical. With her eyes nervously twitching, she sings “Bury the Hatchet,” describing how in her perfect family she still “had an ax to grind.”

Ward fills “Chummy Chum Chum” with humorous sexual insinuations as he imagines a 1946 audience dealing with Oscar Wilde’s (Curtis) affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (Stoeke) without any overt mention of homosexuality.

Tipping his hat to the copycat ways of playwrights, he parodies everything from “Grease” to “A Chorus Line” to “Into the Woods,” all with varying success. Kay Cole’s choreography and musical staging are serviceable but not stunning. Director Sarah Gurfield indulges Ward’s concept instead of disciplining and fine-tuning this overstuffed package.

The top-notch singing talents of this ensemble and the gimmick of a different guest star at each performance can’t save this production. The musical is neither as smooth nor as witty as last year’s “Forbidden Broadway,” and needs more polish and pizazz to get out of the musical graveyard.

*

“The Grave White Way,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6537 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 17. $27.50-$30. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.