lovingrepeating3 If you like the wit and writing of Gertrude Stein, along with what one might call the stock conventions and tunesmithery of musicals, I don’t think you can go wrong with “Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein,” nor with the way director caryn desai and cast give the award-winning show its West Coast premiere at the International City Theatre. Aside from some opening-night mic static, the presentation was flawless.

The beginning of my problems with the show is that I don’t find Ms. Stein’s wordplay at all compelling, and nearly the entire script consists of patches of Stein’s writing (as corralled by Frank Galati). There is no doubt she was a clever person. But much of her poetry/prose is grounded in the literary device of rearranging simple words ad nauseam.

“And to in six and another,” Stein writes in “As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story,” a work that features prominently in “Loving Repeating.” “And to and in and six and another. And to and in and six and another. And to in six and and to and in and six and another. And to and six and in and another and and to and six and another and and to and in and six and and to and six and in and another.” I’m quoting verbatim, not doing caricature—but it’s hard to tell, right? Seems like anyone might have gotten these results by writing to/and/in/six/another onto dozens of pieces of paper and then plucked them out of a hat? Makes you wonder if Stein’s goofing on you?

There are times, particularly during this number, where “Loving Repeating” seems to acknowledge this. Without knowing much about Stein, I wonder if the woman she became with age—the woman responsible for the autobiographical narrative that begins the play and is interspersed throughout—might not make the same acknowledgement. During the play, at least, the older Stein (played with fantastic charm by Cheryl David) often looks mordantly askance at younger Stein (Shannon Warne, who in terms of casting and performance is to David as De Niro is to Brando in “The Godfather II”) and her grandiloquent dreams of psychologically understanding everyone who has ever lived by mastering their repetition in speech and content. (No doubt studying under William James could make a body understandably ambitious.)

It’s not that Stein is pointless, anymore than her coeval dadists (e.g., Duchamp) were pointless. Early on in “Loving Repeating,” while discussing her chosen literary style as an attempt to revitalize language (cp. the “Make It New” dictum of Ezra Pound, one of Stein’s many literary compatriots), the older Stein tells us, “Now listen! I’m no fool: I know that in daily life people don’t go around saying, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ [a reference to a famous line from her poem "Sacred Emily"]. But I notice that you all know it. Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.” Touché, Gertrude.

A second problem for a fellah like me is pretty much hating show tunes. While nearly everything Trey Parker & Matt Stone do in/with the genre tickles me to death, you won’t find the soundtrack album for “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” in my CD collection between Pixies and Modest Mouse. Still, I loved the musical episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” was pretty impressed by the film version of “Chicago,” think “Grease” is goofy fun, think “All That Jazz” and “Dancer in the Dark” are brilliant—so I’m not completely dismissive of the form. But there is what feels to me like standard show-tune fare, and Loving Repeating is full of it.

That’s not to say composer Stephen Flaherty doesn’t produce a few moments even I can appreciate. For example, there’s a lovely moment (presumably from Stein’s “A Lyrical Opera Made by Two, to Be Sung”) in which young Stein and lifetime companion Alice B. Toklas (Melissa Lyons Caldretti, as successfully supportive here as Toklas was of Stein in life) vocally mirror each other a capella as they take the word “two” (and, metaphorically, their new pairing) out for a spin and find themselves perfectly in sync.

Nonetheless, most of the time I couldn’t help thinking “cornball,” and I could never get past that. In musicals the cornball is often played as cornball, with a wink that lets us in on the joke. But it’s cornball, and if you don’t like cornball, you’ll be sitting there thinking: “How cornball!”

If you’re seeing “Loving Repeating” for a historical primer on Stein, you’ll probably be half-satisfied. A good bit of attention is paid to Stein’s college-age development and to her relationship to Toklas and gay life in Paris; and no question we get a flavorful taste of the mature Stein. But the famous salons she hosted are given nary a mention. There’s a cute anecdote about T.S. Eliot, but not a whiff of Picasso, even though his paintings dominate the floor of the play’s ascetically beautiful set.

But come for the performances, and satiety is yours. The five supporting actors (serving multiple functions), while carrying less dramatic weight, need to flex as much musical muscle—and more in the way of dance—than the three leads, and they are properly pumped up.

Many may be interested in “Loving Repeating” as a “gay” play (to call this “a gay play” probably cannot be misnomer no matter what meaning the speaker has in mind), and it does not disappoint on this score. Stein may have been the first person to use “gay” in reference to same-sex relationships, and when she used it, she used it. “Loving Repeating” pays proper homage to this usage and the feelings behind it.

If you don’t know how you feel about Gertrude Stein and don’t know how you feel about musicals, I don’t know what to tell you. But if you do know how you feel about them, it’s obvious what you should do.

LOVING REPEATING: A MUSICAL OF GERTRUDE STEIN INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE • 300 E OCEAN BLVD • LONG BEACH 90802 • 562.436.4610 • ICTLONGBEACH.ORG • THURS-SAT 8PM, SUN 2PM • $37-$44 • THROUGH FEB 13