So it should surprise no one that, two months later, there's a musical satire of the controversial, accident-prone production and its Tony-winning original director: The Legend of Julie Taymor, or The Musical That Killed Everybody!, which plays at the Bleecker Theatre under the direction of Joe Barros. What's shocking is that the show manages to be even duller than the one that inspired it.

The closest that Travis Ferguson and Dave Ogrin's score comes to a catchy number is a ballad titled "Boy Falls from the Rafters," a cute but wan attempt to ape the Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark song, "Boy Falls from the Sky." It almost seems like the creators came up with that joke and then tried to write a musical around it.

The chief problem with the whole venture is that a good satire needs good character development. But here, characters and actions are dropped in and out, with no build-up or thought for dramatic structure. It's assumed that the audience is made up of Broadway insiders who can fill in the details on their own. A line about journalistic integrity from a character inspired by New York Post gadfly Michael Riedel is this show's idea of a laugh line. But this strategy can only work with a script that is more imaginative and less over-the-top.

Jennifer Barnhart throws herself gamely into the proceedings as the title character -- or rather as a director named Julie Paymore -- but she's unable to make this show anything but a one-joke sketch.

-- Andy Buck