Theater

Icelandic musical about the financial crisis is on thin ice

It’s the rare musical title that tips off the plot: There is indeed a riot going in “Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter,” and it does take place inside that man’s elbow.

Conceptually, this is kind of like the ’60s movie “Fantastic Voyage” as done as a rock musical about the 2008 financial collapse of Iceland.

Book writers Ívar Páll Jónsson and Gunnlaugur Jónsson probably believed New Yorkers could more easily relate to a body part than Reykjavík.

With a premise this jaw-droppingly odd, there are only two possible outcomes: The show could be a wonderful oddity or a cringe-fest.

Unfortunately, it takes option 2.

The denizens of Elbowville — that’s north of Knee York and south of Eyesockette — don’t mind living in a sleepy backwater, fishing lobster in the lymphatic channels.

Things change when ambitious aide Peter (Marrick Smith) persuades his mayor boss (Cady Huffman) to create wealth with a “prosperity machine” that manufactures both bogus promissory notes and insufferable whimsy in equal quantities.

A consumerist bubble is followed by a violent crash accompanied by civic unrest.

It’s the audience that should go to the barricades, set off by Jónsson’s awful lyrics — “Everyone is happy,” the mayor sings triumphantly, “everyone is wealthy/I’m sexually healthy.”

For a musical set in an elbow, “Revolution” has its heart in the right place, but it’s heavy-handed and tiresomely quirky. It also looks like a terrible hybrid of Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton.

A bull market isn’t the only thing that can crash and burn.