Entertainment

New Chaplin biomusical is unsound

It’s not a great sign when you leave a musical thinking more about the visuals than the songs — which is exactly what happens at Broadway’s new “Chaplin.”

The show about the silent-film icon is packed with so many biographical details that it seems like a PowerPoint presentation with songs. But hey, at least it looks good!

The stylish project’s sets and projections are all white, black or gray. Amy Clark and Martin Pakledinaz’s gorgeous monochromatic costumes ground the various points of the stretched-out timeline, which starts in London in 1894 and goes all the way to the Oscars of 1972.

Instead of zeroing in on a key period, book writers Thomas Meehan (“The Producers,” “Hairspray”) and Christopher Curtis (who also did the serviceable score) went for the big picture. And so the biomusical packs eight decades into 2 1/2 hours.

We follow Charlie Chaplin (Rob McClure) from his youth in English vaudeville through his Hollywood debut with Mack Sennett (Michael McCormick), his rise to fame as a highly paid star, milestones like “The Kid” and “The Gold Rush,” and the post-WW II lefty politics that led to a feud with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (the excellent Jenn Colella, who pretty much hijacks the second act).

It’s a handful, and still there’s more, because a musical needs a love story.

The show tries hard to present Chaplin as hounded by gold-digging women, but it can’t entirely sugarcoat his pervy taste for teenagers. He married his fourth and last wife, Oona — Eugene O’Neill’s daughter — when she was 18 and he was 54.

If this reads like a recap of a famous man’s bullet-point path, it’s because “Chaplin” is just that.

At least things move along zippily under the direction of Warren Carlyle, who also choreographed. Every once in a while he cleverly incorporates famous images — like the dinner rolls so memorably used in “The Gold Rush” — but there’s a dearth of showstopping numbers.

The agile McClure captures Chaplin’s physical trademarks — particularly the Little Tramp’s duck gait — and he’s very likable, but things move too fast for him to flesh out his character. So he tries to sound convincing on pseudo-introspective comments like “Everybody wants to be me. Except me.”

Meehan and Curtis’ main idea is to use their subject’s mother (Christiane Noll) as a through line illuminating his torments and hang-ups.

A performer herself, Hannah Chaplin became afflicted with dementia, and was committed to an asylum. The show argues that, in a way, she haunted her son his entire life. Unfortunately, this seems like a pop-psychological gimmick — bad mother, bad! — and we tire of Hannah’s constant interruptions.

When Charlie, much older, sings “Where are the people that once loved me?” the pathos gets a little much — even if the real Chaplin wasn’t averse to sentimentality. Maybe Buster Keaton would have been a better Broadway choice for our times.