Do you remember ads in old ’60s comic books urging you to purchase a mail order monkey? The team behind Pepe! The Mail Order Monkey Musical does, and figured the premise was bizarre enough to build a musical around.

Which may be true, but unfortunately the material doesn’t live up to the concept here. Most of Pepe!‘s time is spent meandering through sing-song musical numbers with cringe-worthy rhymes about suburbia. It all builds toward the arrival of the monkey (Rick Hammerly, the best performer of the bunch), who comes on the scene throwing feces and generating mayhem.

Cyle Durkee makes for a convincingly spastic nerd, though his chemistry with his brother Chris (John Moriarity) is stifled by Moriarity’s distracting tendency to look above the audience rather than connect with it. Many of the other principals in the cast suffer from pitch problems, or lack the presence to fully command the stage during a solo number. A note for foodies: a cameo role as a postmaster on some nights will reportedly be played by former Top Chef contestant Carla Hall, though she was not among the cast Wednesday evening.

The show’s comedic highpoint is the song “Pepe, Oh Pepe,” a maudlin lament about a monkey gone missing. Unfortunately, we’ve gone through everything from painful housewife empowerment numbers to a nine-verse introductory song before we get there.

Pepe! The Mail Order Monkey Musical has four additional performances. The schedule is available here.