There was a thrilling dance number in  last year’s Kander, Ebb and Miranda musical “New York, New York,” in which iron workers dance in mid-air on a beam of a skyscraper under construction – one of the exciting moments in a spectacularly designed show that served as a three-dimensional travelogue through the city, from Times Square to Central Park to, yes, the Empire State Building. I should say, the number thrilled me, and I’m the one who found the design spectacular. Many others dismissed the musical as an overlong, overstuffed feel-good show for tourists, and it lasted just three months on Broadway.

My resentful theory about the nay-sayers was that they didn’t grow up in New York, the way I (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) did; so their insecurities about being non-native New Yorkers would make them dismiss a show because it was a love letter to New York that might appeal to tourists.

This made me defiantly receptive to “Empire: The Musical,” which has opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages, about the construction of the Empire State Building, one of the most overexposed symbols of New York City.   Just before it began, I noticed a woman sitting in front of me with a tote bag that said “New York, and Nowhere Else” and was going to ask her at intermission whether she had seen “New York, New York” and what she had thought of it. But I never got to ask her, because she walked out at intermission. 

I understood. “Empire: The Musical” has a pleasant enough score, and a hard-working cast,  but there’s nothing thrilling about it – certainly not its own dancing-on-beam number, “Lookahee,” whose lyrics begin “Hey, pretty girl, turn your head and look at me.” For all its busyness, “Empire” is too often an energy-sapping exercise, its fictionalized plot  so pointlessly convoluted it hardly feels worth sorting out.

The story begins in 1976, with a character named Sylvie Lee (portrayed at the performance I attended by Julia Louise Hosack understudying for Jessica Ranville), whose daughter Rayne (Kiana Kabeary) wants to be an ironworker,  because she finds Lewis Hines’ photos of the ironworkers on the Empire State Building construction site “groovy.” (Remember, it’s 1976.) This makes Sylvie bitter: “Lorayne, your grandfather, my father, died on that stupid building.”

Sylvie then becomes our narrator, in collaboration with Frances Belle “Wally” Wolodsky (Kaitlyn Davidson.) Together they bring us back to 1929, and the demolition of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, on the site of what’s eventually planned as the tallest skyscraper in the world. Wally is the “can-do gal” (what we would now call the executive assistant) to Al Smith (Paul Salvatoriello), the former governor of New York and 1928 Democratic candidate for president and John J. Raskob (Howard Kaye), the GM and Dupont executive, who are in charge of the construction project. We come to understand that Wally is the real prime mover, ordering the 57,000 tons of steel beams from McClintic-Marshall and ten million bricks from Accrington Brick & Tile. Except Raskob and Smith are in the history books, and Wally is not. Neither is Charles Kinney (Albert Guerzon), who is depicted as the leading architect on behalf of the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Both Charles and Wally are apparent fabrications, which feels like a betrayal, no less because they flirt a lot with one another. 

Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull, the pair who wrote the book, music and lyrics for “Empire,” do make an effort to present the actual dramatic history of the construction, with its various subplots, but it’s buried beneath the largely misguided attempts at musical theater entertainment. The construction workers, for example, were indeed a cross-section of multicultural America, beginning with members of the indigenous Mohawk nation famed for their skywalking. That’s Sylvie’s heritage, on her mother’s side: Rudy Shaw (again Kiana Kabeary),  a Mohawk woman who disguises herself as a man so that she could be an ironworker on the building, since women were barred from employment.  Rudy married a Polish poet  (Devin Cortez), the father Sylvie never knew, just one of the many nationalities represented among the immigrant workers. This would be fine – inspiring even – were it not for characterizations meant to be amusing but full of lazy stereotype.

I was willing  to be reasonably content with the unmemorable but inoffensive score, which is replete with lively old-timey numbers:

 I could overlook the clunky lyrics, confusing plot and unvaried set, suggesting beams and little else. I was  happy enough that it was a New York-centric story and  I appreciated the pros among the relatively large ensemble —  particularly the witty delivery by Davidson and the vaudevillian verve of Salvatoriello (who  feels ideal to star in a revival of ‘Fiorello!”)

But then “Empire” closed with a finale worse than predictable, entitled Empire (“This’ll be our empire, this’ll be our destiny, our destiny/…For today is the day and this dream belongs to us”)

And I couldn’t help thinking: THIS is the overlong, overstuffed feel-good show for tourists that people unjustly labeled “New York, New York.” 

Empire
New World Stages through September 22
Running time: Two and a half hours including one intermission
Tickets: $49 – $129
Book, Music & Lyrics by Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull
Directed by Cady Huffman
Choreography by Lorna Ventura, scenic design by Walt Spangler, costume design by Tina McCartney, lighting design by Jamie Roderick, sound design by Shannon Slaton, hair & make-up design by Ian Joseph, music supervision & orchestrations by Lena Gabrielle, arrangements by Robert Hull & Lena Gabrielle, music direction by Gillian Berkowitz, props design by Brendan McCann
Cast:  Danny Iktomi Bevins, Jessica Ranville, Devin Cortez, Morgan Cowling, Kaitlyn Davidson, Joel Douglas, Joseph Fierberg, Alexandra Frohlinger, Matt Gibson, Albert Guerzon, Julia Louise Hosack, Kiana Kabeary, Howard Kaye, TJ Newton, April Ortiz, Kennedy Perez, Paul Salvatoriello, J Savage, Robbie Serrano, and Ethan Saviet.