Debauchery isn't what it used to be --- onstage, anyway. When the cold-eyed chorus, clad in next-to-nothing and radiating sleaze, slithers onstage at "The Wild Party," you almost want to give them a warm, welcoming hug. Aren't these the same kids who gyrated so seductively in "Chicago," who leered to such potent effect in Sam Mendes' "Cabaret"?

Debauchery isn’t what it used to be — onstage, anyway. When the cold-eyed chorus, clad in next-to-nothing and radiating sleaze, slithers onstage at “The Wild Party,” you almost want to give them a warm, welcoming hug. Aren’t these the same kids who gyrated so seductively in “Chicago,” who leered to such potent effect in Sam Mendes’ “Cabaret”? Comparisons to Broadway’s recent forays into divine decadence aren’t the only ones on hand for Manhattan Theater Club’s “Wild Party,” of course. As all Gotham theater folk know — and audiences may be confused to discover — this season will see two new musicals so titled, both based on the 1928 poem by Joseph Moncure March. The second, produced by the Public Theater and various commercial partners, opens on Broadway in April. So why does this first “Wild Party” evoke such a strong sense of deja vu?

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Although the back-to-back successes of Broadway’s dark-hued Kander & Ebb revivals may have inspired their creators, the arrival of these competing “Wild Party” tuners is still an odd coincidence. March’s poem is hardly natural material for a stage musical. A sardonic tale of the wages of lust, it’s like an ice-cold gin martini — best dispatched in a single shot, so it scorches as it goes down. Written in clipped, propulsive rhyming verse, it’s Dr. Seuss on the sauce, if you will. The lead characters are vicious but vivid — a conniving vaudeville dancer, Queenie (Julia Murney), her abusive boyfriend Burrs (Brian D’Arcy James), and the slightly more wholesome gent who gets tangled in a game of jealousy and revenge during a drunken all-nighter in their sordid apartment.

The first challenge facing the creators of these musicals is how to win over an audience with such nasty material. One alternative is to serve it up in all its sordidness, garnished with the cool comic panache that characterizes “Chicago” or Brecht and Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.” Another is to soften it up for easier consumption by fans of the heart-tugging Broadway musical. Andrew Lippa, the composer, book writer and lyricist of this first “Wild Party,” is nothing if not ambitious — he tries to do both.

And the material poses another major obstacle: It revolves around a single incident. Queenie and Burrs both wake up on the wrong side of the bed in the poem’s opening chapters, spoiling for a fight. Fight they do, and Queenie extends the bout at the party. When a natty, handsome man, Black (Taye Diggs), arrives on the arm of Queenie’s girlfriend Kate (Idina Menzel), Queenie uses him to put the screws to Burrs, with deadly results. One room, one night, one conflict — a small canvas for a full-fledged musical. Let alone two.

But the narrow focus of the story certainly hasn’t daunted the author of “Wild Party” version 1.0. Lippa is a very facile composer, and he seems to have had no trouble creating music to fill out every corner of his small canvas. The show is virtually sung-through, with minimal dialogue bridging musical numbers, and nary a reprise in sight. In addition to solos for each of the principal characters, Lippa has written soaring ensembles for this quartet, as well as songs for selected other characters — a lusty lesbian, a prizefighter and his girl — and a good half-dozen rousing chorus numbers. Musical styles range from introspective piano ballads to gospel-inflected roof-raisers, torch songs to pop-rock anthems to classic Broadway show stoppers.

The composer isn’t going to face the accusations of artiness that have sometimes been leveled at young composers fighting for a foothold in today’s musical theater (see Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel and Michael John LaChiusa, author of the second “Wild Party”). His music is very accessible indeed. But that’s the problem — it’s accessible because you feel you’ve heard it all before. Lippa’s two and a half hours of music boasts little of real distinction or originality. He’s a skilled student of musical theater history, but where is his own voice? (And the wide variety of musical idioms employed doesn’t help to set a consistent tone or convincingly establish the show’s milieu. At one point in the final moments we seem to go from Frank Wildhorn to Kurt Weill in a few disconcerting bars of music.)

Lippa’s lyrics, meanwhile, are on the rudimentary side, serviceable but simple, lacking in ingenuity and wit. The show’s major attempt at comedy is the first act’s “An Old-Fashioned Love Story,” a wry lament for the girls she can’t get sung by Madelaine True (Alix Korey), the predatory lesbian. Lippa wins laughs by finding rhymes for the words “beaver” and “bush.” (The audience, I must report, was in stitches, and gave the song the most enthusiastic reception.)

And Lippa’s methods of expanding the material bear mixed results. Attempts to implant hearts of gold — or at least tarnished silver — in March’s unredeemed characters sap the material’s lurid but potent appeal. A desire to enrich the poem’s comic-strip characterizations is understandable, but Lippa’s banal writing turns the cartoons into cliches. After a vaudevillian number in which Burrs’ violent womanizing is vividly illustrated, he announces, “He didn’t want to be bad. He didn’t want to run from girl to girl. There was just no one who understood him. No one who knew what he needed.”

Murney is a strong vocalist with an appropriate steely edge to her voice, but she seems more comfortable playing the generic love-smitten ingenue of the second act (“I never knew that I could feel this way…”) than the manipulative mantrap of the first. She’s unconvincing as a vaudeville dancer of the roaring ‘ 20s, in any case.

James’ Burrs is nicely sung but on the bland side — hardly the menacing lout described. Diggs is a magnetic presence and a capable singer, but his character is the least defined of the principal trio (fans of “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” may want to know that he does display his spectacular physique). And Menzel makes rather too much of her big solo, “The Life of the Party.” There’s an air of the aggressive hard-sell about her performance — she all but demands to stop the show.

The litany of disappointments must also include Mark Dendy’s choreography. His bio boasts of numerous ballets as well as 1998’s well-received “Dream Analysis.” But for his first major musical he draws mostly on familiar Fosse-esque tableaux and Broadway mannerisms (the exception is an intriguing, sensuous solo performed in one of the show’s rare quiet interludes, a moment strikingly — and appealingly — at odds with the formulaic nature of the rest of the show).

Gabriel Barre’s direction neither helps nor hinders the material, and its in-your-face loucheness is pretty familiar by now — a desperate desire to scandalize us must be behind the entirely unnecessary scene in which Kate uses a toilet onstage. That attitude coexists uneasily with the show’s equally ardent need to ingratiate itself, as evidenced by several interchangeable wow-’em-with-a-big-finish chorus numbers. The result is a hard-working, ambitious musical that makes a negligible impact. Just as it’s hard to exude decadence when you’re so obviously trying to please, it’s hard to make a memorable impression with forgettable material.

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The Wild Party

City Center Stage I, New York; 299 seats; $60

  • Production: A Manhattan Theater Club presentation of a musical in two acts with book, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, based on the poem by Joseph Moncure March. Directed by Gabriel Barre.
  • Crew: Choreography, Mark Dendy. Music director, Stephen Oremus. Sets, David Gallo; costumes, Martin Pakledinaz; lighting, Kenneth Posner; sound, Brian Ronan; orchestrations, Michael Gibson; music coordinator, Michael Keller; fight director, Rick Sordelet; production stage manager, Ed Fitzgerald. Opened Feb. 24, 2000. Reviewed Feb. 19. Running time: 2 HOURS, 20 MIN. Musical numbers: "Queenie Was a Blonde," "The Apartment (Sunday Noon)," "Out of the Blue," "What a Party," "Raise the Roof," "Look at Me Now," "Poor Child," "An Old-Fashioned Love Story," "The Juggernaut," "A Wild, Wild Party," "Two of a Kind," "Maybe I Like It This Way," "What Is It About Her?," "The Life of the Party," "Who Is This Man?," "The Gal for Me/I'll Be Here," "Listen to Me," "Let Me Drown," "The Fight," "Come With Me," "Jackie's Last Dance," "Make Me Happy," "How Did We Come to This?"
  • Cast: Queenie - Julia Murney Burrs - Brian D'Arcy James Reno - Todd Andersen Kegs - Ron J. Todorowski Madelaine True - Alix Korey Eddie - Raymond Jaramillo McLeod Peggy - Megan Sikora Max - James Delisco Beeks Rose Himmelsteen - Felicia Finley Sam Himmelsteen - Peter Kapetan Ellie - Amanda Watkin Jackie - Lawrence Keigwin Oscar d'Armano - Charles Dillon Phil d'Armano - Kevin Cahoon Dolores - Kena Tangi Dorsey Mae - Jennifer Cody Nadine - Kristin McDonald Kate - Idina Menzel Black - Taye Diggs The Neighbor - Charlie Marcus The Cop - Steven Pasquale

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