Tony Shaloub and Brooke Adams (Joan Marcus)

Ken Ludwig's farcical screwball comedy Lend Me a Tenor first premiered in 1986, but this wearisome trifle feels so out of place in the Foul Year of Our Lord 2010 that it might as well be a relic from the Gilded Age. It's actually set in 1934 in Cleveland, but of course there's no hint of Depression-era squalor here; the milieu is Cleveland's upper crust, who are thrilled that world famous opera singer Tito Merelli (Anthony LaPaglia) has arrived for a single performance of Otello. But when the corpulent tenor is found dead to the world an hour before curtain, local impresario Saunders (Tony Shaloub) must scramble to find a replacement.

The action takes place in Merelli's luxurious four star hotel suite, and though it's equipped with numerous doors for requisite slamming, the show still falls flat, despite the talented ensemble and Stanley Tucci's adequate direction. Part of the problem is that you can anticipate many of the jokes, both physical and verbal, well before they're plated, served, and gobbled up by the howling retirees in the audience. And the plot hinges on an almost risible premise: That a short young white man in blackface is completely indistinguishable from a fat old Italian in blackface. Comedy doesn't work without serious consequences, and Ludwig's Act II device turns its back on reality so completely that there's nothing at stake. If we suspend all of our disbelief, then all real risk is suspended, too.

Shaloub, one of our favorites, does his best as the arrogant, overbearing producer desperately struggling to make the show go on, but like most of the others he plays it a little too broad, and the comedy descends into Catskills territory, with interminable double entendres and double takes milked to death. Justin Bartha (The Hangover) is forgettable as Saunders's anxious assistant/opera buff who fills in for Merelli; and I'll be surprised if LaPaglia's lecherous Italian caricature doesn't inspire a letter from UNICO. Early in his first scene, Shaloub sets the evening's tone by repeatedly spitting waxed fruit and dill into the orchestra section. The elderly couple sitting next to me loved every minute of it, and good for them—despite the lousy economy, it's nice to know some people will still pay big bucks to be spit on by a star.