Schmigadoon! review: Tired parody of Broadways Golden Age is been there, doon that

Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.At the Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st StreetIn the early aughts, it was all the rage on Broadway for musicals to send up other musicals.First there was “Urinetown” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” two nerdy parodies that were very funny and had teeth.

In 2005, “Monty Python’s Spamalot” had David Hyde Pierce sing “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews!” And much later in 2015 the Renaissance-set “Something Rotten” put a Shakespearean spin on the sub-genre.After that, the musicals-about-musicals moment felt finally kaput.Well, wait a Schmig.

The formerly dormant trend is active once again with “Schmigadoon!,” the blinding new show at the Nederlander Theatre based on the cancelled Apple TV comedy series about a New York couple whose relationship is put to the test when they become trapped inside a musical.Can’t say I missed it.Been there, ‘doon that.“Schmigadoon!” is pleasant — incessantly so — with a cast full of skilled comics like Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada and Maulik Pancholy from “30 Rock.” Familiar theater faces Max Clayton and Isabelle McCalla are wonderful, too.Old-fangled to a fault, the show will hold some appeal for the traditional set who bristle at this season’s revivals only winding the clock back as far as 1975.But the musical with a book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul is confused as to what it’s supposed to be.

If it’s an ode to Golden Age classics, why does it make them seem so cloying and stupid? If it’s a cutting parody of the likes of “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” “Guys and Dolls” and “The Sound of Music,” why is the tone Hallmark schmaltzy and the jokes surface-skimming, basic and unclever? Maybe on TV, mocking musicals for merely containing singing and dancing is enough to get laughs.On 41st Street, you’ve got to do a lot better than that.Yet that’s Paul’s go-to gag: “Here they go again...