Dancing in the Dark is the latest pre-Broadway tryout to come to the Old Globe. It is based on the Vincent Minnelli movie The Bandwagon, which starred the inimitable Fred Astaire and the gorgeous Cyd Charisse.

The screenplay of The Bandwagon was by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, based on a revue by the same name, which had some wonderful songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz (“Dancing in the Dark” and “Something to Remember You By”) and a series of sketches by George S. Kaufman. The original revue starred both Fred and Adele Astaire.

Many attempts have been made in the past few years to turn movie musicals into stage shows: Hairspray, Cry Baby, Saturday Night Fever, and Xanadu, to name a few. Some have been successful, others not so much. As you can see, the source materials for these transformations typically have some already familiar music, but their screenplays need to be reconfigured to become the book for a musical.

In adapting The Bandwagon, one faces the insurmountable fact that Fred Astaire was irreplaceable and, to a lesser extent, so was Cyd Charisse. In Douglas Carter Beane's new book, he has replaced the lead characters - a has-been dancer from movie musicals (Astaire) and a ballerina (Charisse) - with an Oscar-winning ex-musical comedy star (Scott Bakula) and a modern dancer (Mara Davi).

Scott Bakula is a good musical performer who can move well, but he lacks the vulnerability and the comedic ability of an Astaire, and his OK dancing doesn’t live up to a show called Dancing in The Dark, which at its heart is still a show about dance. To accommodate this casting - having wisely given up on ever finding a new Astaire - Beane has squeezed and tortured the plot, transforming a light ethereal piece into a more complex story. It's layered with a back story involving alcoholism, infidelity, a mean-spirited choreographer, etc., which tends to drag the whole piece down and place the songs and dances into contexts that make them seem ridiculous.

In the movie, the modern dance itself was good; it was the concept (a musical Faust) and technical disaster that doomed any attempt to put it on. The composer couple were hardworking artists who wanted their musical to work, while in the new musical, they are always wrangling; jealousy, unresolved feelings, and alcoholism are brought in to give them depth but instead, at times, just make them annoying. The actual number "Dancing in the Dark" was, in the film, an elegant stroll in the park that turned into a dance, while in Beane's book it becomes the 10:30 number, replacing the original big closing dance, a beautiful ballet that starred Cyd Charisse.