“Goodbye and good luck to you all,” a woman said as she fled Studio 54 at intermission like a bat out of musical-theater hell.
It wasn’t clear whether she wished that to the audience members who remained at “The People in the Picture” or the actors in that Roundabout fiasco.
There is quality on paper: Mike Stoller, whose hits were collected in “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” co-wrote the score. Musical director Paul Gemignani often collaborates with Stephen Sondheim.
Above all, star Donna Murphy is a Tony winner who’s lit up the likes of “Passion” and “Wonderful Town.” Here, she works tirelessly to perform CPR on a DOA show.
The sappy, pandering book by “Beaches” novelist Iris Rainer Dart alternates between 1977 New York and Warsaw from 1935 to 1946. This means that Murphy plays both a feisty Jewish grandma — Bubbie, of course — and her younger self, Raisel.
The aging Bubbie is slowly losing her marbles, but she has enough left to tell her granddaughter Jenny (Rachel Resheff, another of this season’s preternaturally assured stage kids) about her past in a Yiddish theater group in Poland. Presto, we meet the Warsaw Gang and see some of the stuff they used to put on.
Among their pieces is a farcical take on “The Dybbuk,” done as a vaudevillian number that connoisseurs of Broadway duds will recall mistily decades from now: It’s so misguided and inane, so dementedly ridiculous that it becomes an object of fascination.
Only visuals make an impression — Murphy sauntering about in long braids, surrounded by dancing rabbis — because the score fades into oblivion even as it’s being played. Stoller and Artie Butler’s music is a little klezmer-ish, a little ballad-ish and a lot crap-ish, while Dart’s lyrics are clumsy, at best. “I left my shopping list at home when I went out to shop,” Bubbie sings in “Selective Memory” — the only tune half-worthy of Murphy’s talent.
But it’s not just the music that’s subpar: The book is full of holes, and pulls at the heartstrings without earning its pathos, ensnaring good supporting performers like Alexander Gemignani (Paul’s son), Nicole Parker, Chip Zien and Christopher Innvar into a gooey mess.
The Roundabout rarely presents original musicals, putting its money instead into revivals and revues. Tellingly, it has managed to find something new that looks, sounds and feels dated.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com