Book by Larry Gelbart, with lyrics by David Zippel and music by Cy Coleman. Directed by Jennifer Copping. Produced by the PIT Collective. At Performance Works on Sunday, July 9. Continues until July 17

City of Angels is a multiple Tony Award winner, but it’s almost a musical for people who hate musicals. There are such long breaks between songs that it’s startling when two characters suddenly break into a duet. And there’s not a single show-stopping number, nothing that’s even remotely memorable enough to hum as one’s leaving the theatre. That’s a problem for a musical.

It’s also a problem for the PIT Collective’s ambitious but flawed staging of City of Angels. The bloated Broadway mess clocks in at over three hours, and while the company struggles admirably to acquit itself with all of the many moving parts, it never quite comes together.

City of Angels is set in the 1940s and straddles two worlds. Stine (Donal Thoms-Cappello) is a writer from New York whose pulpy detective novel is being made into a movie. He has a three-picture deal and relocates to Los Angeles to write the script, but he has to contend with director-producer Buddy Fidler (Paul Herbert), a Hollywood big shot who rewrites Stine’s every word. Stine’s wife, Gabby (Caitlin Clugston), is a book editor who’s devastated that her husband is selling out.

The other world is that of Stine’s screenplay, occupied by a parade of perfect film-noir stereotypes. Stone (Michael Lomenda) is the hard-boiled hero of Stine’s novel, a tough but moral private eye with a secret past and lightning-fast wit. He can’t resist the dames, of course, so when femme fatale Alaura Kingsley (an excellent Crystal Balint) slinks into his office to trade innuendo-laden quips and hire him for a job, he takes the cheque and signs on for a world of hurt and double-crosses. Director Jennifer Copping plays both Stine’s secretary, Oolie, and Fidler’s secretary, Donna.

At first it’s clever and fun as Stine’s reality suddenly interjects into Stone’s world, like when the characters all start speaking gibberish and moving backward, conveying Stine’s in-the-moment rewrite, but it has diminishing returns every time it happens again after that. There are also significant sections presented as black-and-white film projections, but they always feel a bit amateur and go on a little too long—a lot like this City of Angels experience. All of the leads offer good performances, and there are some great lines and wonderfully comedic moments, but the whole production feels fussy and overly staged, which makes it drag and lag. And that’s a more lethal combination than any of City of Angels’ other sins.