'Promises, Promises' revival is so 1968

If you need to understand why Broadway - not to mention America - needed to change in 1968, take a look at "Promises, Promises," the emotionally and musically stunted show that opened the same year as "Hair" and entertained the tired-businessman market for three boffo years.

More baffling is the motivation for a major revival of the dated Neil Simon/Burt Bacharach musical-comedy (based on the superior 1960 movie "The Apartment") about male-driven corporate sexual shenanigans in 1962. Unless exploitation of "Mad Men" fashions can be passed off as motive.

Nor is it likely that dream casting is the justification for director/choreographer Rob Ashford's busy and charmless production. Sean Hayes - a deft and endearing light-comedy talent - is terrific as Chuck Baxter, the ambitious low-level nerd at a giant insurance company, who lets married executives use his apartment for quickies with sexy but powerless women from the secretarial staff.

But it is delusional to cast Kristin Chenoweth as his dream girl, Fran Kubelik, the trusting flower from the cafeteria who believes the dashing boss (the good Tony Goldwyn) will leave his wife for her. Chenoweth has many large gifts, including a Kewpie-doll shrewdness and leather-lined lungs. Naïve young victimhood, however, is not now and may never have been in her repertory. To give the star enough to do, the production shoehorns two unrelated Bacharach hits - "I Say a Little Prayer" and "A House is Not a Home" - into his bouncy end-of-an-era-defining score.

Except for Hayes, there is one good reason for the revival, and that is Katie Finneran. But she only shows up for a couple of scenes in the second act as Marge MacDougall, a sloppy drunk and ladylike raunchball, who connects with the lovelorn Baxter at a bar on Christmas Eve.

Unfortunately, she is so adorable that we hate Baxter for being so rude to her when Miss Kubelik's botched suicide attempt makes her suddenly available. (Great fun, right?) We also resent the show for slamming the door on her, the only interesting female in the story. Luckily, she is spared the elbow-flapping indignities of "Turkey Lurkey Time," arguably the best argument against office Christmas parties ever on Broadway.

WHAT: "Promises, Promises"

WHERE: Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway

INFO: $56.50-$136.50; 212-239-6200; promisespromisesbroadway.com

BOTTOM LINE: Too lame, too late