An irritating spin on a classic fairy tale

Broadway's scramble to find another "Wicked" for moms and tween daughters has led, perhaps inevitably, down the rabbit hole.

A grown-up Manhattan Alice -- overworked, disillusioned and split from her laid-off husband -- is forced to move with her preternaturally precocious daughter to (watch out Queen of Hearts) the "city of Queens." The White Rabbit leads her down the service elevator.

Enjoyable musicals have been wrought from less promising ideas. Alas, "Wonderland," a hit in Tampa, Fla., and Houston, is not one of those. Despite a high-decibel cast of "American Idol"-ready screamers and Lewis Carroll's beloved characters, the show is oddly glum, charmless and, for all the requisite behind-the-looking-glass imagery, pretty skimpy.

This is not wholly the fault of Frank Wildhorn, the vanilla-pudding potboiler-pop composer whose "Jekyll & Hyde," "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "The Civil War" seemed to appeal in the '90s to people who found Andrew Lloyd Webber too hard.

The book, by director Gregory Boyd and lyricist Jack Murphy, flattens the wacky and enchanting parts of Alice's coming-of-age story. Instead, they dig for psychobabble about moody Alice's need to find herself by getting back her sense of wonder. Long before intermission, we know how that feels.

Except for cabaret-diva Karen Mason as a daffy-dry and imperious Queen of Hearts, the cast mostly works hard but amuses less than Carroll's characters do. Janet Dacal, as Alice, has a pleasant, forthright manner and the leather-lunged voice that Wildhorn requires. So does Carly Rose Sonenclar, Alice's young daughter, who somehow seems more mature than the cutesy grown-ups around her.

Neil Patel's sets are mostly trippy projections on an old-fashioned metal picture frame around a flat folk-art sun. Susan Hilferty may have dreamed up the only boring costumes of her career. Padded butt-cheeks? On everybody? The chorus of legs for the Caterpillar are clever, but they disappear to join others in the busywork cheap-spoof choreography. The White Rabbit says "I'm tardy" because, he claims in a running gag, "Disney wouldn't let us use late."

Wildhorn's songs all tend to sound like other songs, except when they joke about "Evita," "Gypsy" and "South Pacific," in which cases, they actually are other songs. Lyrics rhyme "who you are" with "shining star." And children split between two parents may be upset by the (spoiler alert) happy end of this domestic fairy tale.

It's that kind of show.

WHAT "Wonderland"

WHERE Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway

INFO $44-$132; 877-250-2929; wonderlandonbroadway.com

BOTTOM LINE charmless and skimpy, but plenty loud