Photo by Scott Suchman

The best thing about a bad musical about a bad musical is that you can use its own words against it. The review writes itself! Take these real quotes from And the Curtain Rises, a new musical with a play-within-a-play structure that tells the story of the creation of America's first musical, The Black Crook: "What have I got? A stage full of garbage and a play I can't even watch without cringing!" "The entire final scene descends into the depths of hell right before our eyes!" Fill a musical with lines like these, and you'd better expect them to show up in reviews if the production is anything less than superb.

Those words were spoken by William Wheatley (Nick Dalton), the beleaguered producer who has sunken his inheritance into producing a stinker of a play – his best friend's melodrama, Return to Black Creek, set in a cornfield. "Corn, the set is nothing but corn! … Born, I wish I'd never been born!" sing the actors in the opening number, "Someone Must be Told." Only a few forgettable, maudlin songs later, the audience will feel the same way. When a fire at the theater next door strands a half-dozen French ballerinas in New York just as Wheatley's show begins to implode, he has the novel idea to combine music, dancing, and theater in one production. But it takes far too long for him to reach this conclusion, so the entire first act leaves us watching people complaining about a bad play, within a bad play. Here's another suitable line, from the ballet director, Madame Grimaud (Alma Cuervo): "You have too many words, and most of them are wrong."

Eventually, Wheatley and the dancers come together to create theatrical history with The Black Crook – a play that is equally as bad as his original one, but with the addition of pretty French can-can dancers in bloomers. All the while, Wheatley is dealing with a potential revolt from his leading lady Millicent (Rebecca Watson), with whom he is embroiled in the most tepid of love affairs. The more interesting flirtation – between the eldest actor, Jeremiah Burnett (Erick Devine), and composer Roman Korda (Brian Sutherland) – is abandoned.

Nevertheless, scenic designer Beowilf Borritt produces a pleasing stand-in for Niblo's Garden Theatre circa 1866. It has a stage that opens up to reveal the theater's house and orchestra pit, occupied by 14 musicians doing the best they can with a lackluster score. When the titular curtain finally does rise on The Black Crook, the seats of the theater behind them, fittingly, are all empty.

Indeed, the show that I attended last Thursday was as plagued with problems as the one within it. Some of the microphones were intermittent, crew members accidentally crashed two pieces of scenery into each other, and one dancer slipped and fell. During intermission, a special effect required several crew members to squeegee a large amount of water off of the floor – and judging by how many people stayed in their seats, fascinated by the clean-up process, this may have been the most engrossing part of the show.

But perhaps And the Curtain Rises is a subversive commentary on the making of a grand, empty spectacle – in which case, it's brilliant. "Is this a play, or saloon entertainment?" asks one of the actors in The Black Crook. "Neither – it's the sixth circle of hell," replies another. If Michael Slade, Joseph Thalken and Mark Campbell (who, respectively, wrote the book, music and lyrics) are trying to make a point about how bad musicals in the 1860s aren't much different than bad musicals in the present day, that point is well-proven. But if not, in the words of Mme. Grimaud, "Don't you think your public has suffered enough?"