'ORCHARD STREET' A SHTICKY AMERICAN TALE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

OY VEY!

There's nothing saying the Lower East Side tenements of 1910 New York shouldn't yield a perfectly watchable musical. Or that writer-composer Jay Kholos doesn't have a personal connection to the Russian Jewish immigrants of that time.

But Kholos' ``A Stoop on Orchard Street,'' for all its cultural benevolence, is sloppy, over-obvious fare and very difficult to endure without a deep generational connection to its subject. An off-Broadway hit, the show's national tour is playing the Madrid Theatre for a month-long run.

And while I'm not sure what that first off-Broadway cast looked and sounded like (soundtracks are available in the lobby), the group assembled by director-choreographer Jason Summers delivers a series of performances as facile and on-the-nose as Kholos' source material.

Kholos clearly had ``Fiddler on the Roof'' in mind when he assembled this tale of turn-of-the-century Jews and their struggles to assimilate in a not-so-friendly America. In ``Orchard Street,'' we hear about these struggles more often than we witness them. The only significant non-Jewish character in the play is a xenophobic Irish cop (played by Greg Magnuson) who sings a song called, yes, ``Why Don't They Go Back.''

You can get the gist of Kholos' entire score, for that matter, through the song titles: ``Melting Pot,'' ``Man of the Family,'' ``The Grass Ain't Always Greener,'' ``Another Man's Wife.'' There is also a song of such extreme pointlessness and schmaltz - ``The Bubbes,'' featuring a line of high-kicking grannies - that its creator should be arrested.

And there's a plot revolving around a hard-scrabble family barely holding it together. Mama Ruth (Ashley Betton) earns money through sewing. Her abusive husband, Hiram (Sean French), wants more out of life, and deserts his family to find it. Brassy son Benny (played at alternating performances by Andy Dubick and Brendan Rosenthal) brings in a few pennies here and there while nursing a dream to become - oy vey! again - a vaudeville star.

Periodically, the old man Benny grew to be (Sheldon Cohen) comes on stage to wax nostalgic through a refrain titled ``I Remember When,'' just in case we're still not getting Kholos' point. Which, in ``A Stoop on Orchard Street,'' is pretty much an impossibility.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

A STOOP ON ORCHARD STREET - Two stars

Where: Madrid Theatre, 21622 Sherman Way, Canoga Park.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday; through April 3.

Tickets: $39 to $49. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Heartfelt and nostalgia-drenched, but also schmaltzy and clumsily performed.

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The musical ``A Stoop on Orchard Street'' follows the struggles of Russian Jewish immigrants in 1910 New York.