No Singing In The Navy ★★

About midway through No Singing in the Navy, the new musical at Playwrights Horizons by Milo Cramer and directed by Aysan Celik, a sinking sensation crept in, and not because the show is about three sailors on 24-hour leave from their boat. Rather, the production started feeling like it might have been hatched and devised in an undergrad drama workshop.

That assumption proved incorrect. The show was, in fact, developed in a graduate school program.

That tidbit was gleaned from the playwright’s note in the program, a compelling half-academic, half-personal essay by Cramer about the piece’s inspiration and their belief that silly sailors are “the true subject of the American musical” and that the show is ultimately a reminder that we all “get one day on the seashore,” that all of life — the good, the bad, and the ugly — is temporary.

In On the Town, the show that this one is directly satirizing, underlying everything is the notion that the three sailors have one day to truly live before heading off to war, one they might not return from, so the trio must make the most of every minute in the Big Apple. By the time the men say farewell to their new friends in “Some Other Time,” the wistful moment is potent because the audience has gotten to know the three young Navy men and share in that joy.

That same underlying existential angst is present in No Singing in the Navy, but it’s lost amongst all the disconnected, scattered silliness. And, unfair as the comparison is to On the Town creators Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, Cramer’s songs never give the show any lift; they just put the continuous antics in song.

An abundance of silliness is not in and of itself a problem (e.g., Xanadu, Spamalot, and Bat Boy, among so many others), especially at a tenuous national moment when audiences are eager for a laugh. But the humor rarely lands fully, eliciting more smirks and light chuckles than guffaws. More depth and flavor are needed, and tougher edges. The show even acknowledges its own identity crisis when a character asks: “Do I have a soul or am I too silly?”

On the plus side, there is an intriguing side story about a crab escaping its bucket to see more of the world, and the talented ensemble members — Bailey Lee, Ellen Nikbakht, and Elliot Sagay — each skillfully play all the characters in this barebones production, one that would feel far more at home in a fringe festival setting than at Playwrights Horizons. Near the end of the show, Cramer goes meta and has the audience watching a show within a show, and because that show is not going well, booing is actively encouraged. It’s a brave maneuver, one that hints at the daring that could have been. Maybe some other time.