What’s the ‘big’ Idea?

On Broadway, “the biggest flop ever” is a bogus appellation; inflation ensures a new biggest flop almost every year, just as it does a new “most expensive musical.” But, by most anyone’s accounting, “Big” was a colossal disaster, both monetarily (it cost and lost reportedly $10.3 million) and artistically. An adaptation of the popular 1988 Tom Hanks film in which a 12-year-old boy makes a wish and finds himself in the body of a grown man, the musical “Big” was charmless, busy and shrill.

Incredibly, “Big” is back, now spelled “big,” and it’s smaller than ever. The new $1.8-million touring version, which opened Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, has a new director (Eric D. Schaeffer), choreographer (Karma Camp) and a rejiggered score (lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr., music by David Shire). “big” is less busy, thankfully, due in part to its smaller cast and less intrusive choreography. But the sets look like they cost $3, and the show is every bit as thin as it was in the original version. Smack in the middle of a 31-week, 33-city tour, “big” is selling itself as a Broadway show but not staying long enough in any city to be hurt by critics. “big” has become the tag sale of musicals.

The plot, with book by John Weidman, closely follows the film and borrows most of its jokes without adding anything funny of its own (presidential intern jokes notwithstanding). Suddenly big after making a wish on an arcade machine, Josh Baskin (Jim Newman) must leave his comfortable suburban home when his mother screamingly mistakes him for a kidnapper. He goes to Manhattan, where he instantly lands a high-paying job at a toy company. There a brittle career woman named Susan (Jacquelyn Piro) falls for him; his innocence offers the antidote for all of the selfish, competitive men she’s known. And so Susan learns to find the child within, while Josh learns to feel love and grow up.

This simple fable, told with a light touch on the screen, is saturated with problems on the stage. Grown up, Josh is given not one personality trait except that he’s young and innocent. Actor Newman is stranded big time, and all he can do is look with the same gosh-gee wonder at everything. But the show provides no genuine wonder at all. The children it presents are shrink-wrapped and sanitized. Young Josh (Joseph Medeiros) and his best friend Billy (Brett Tabisel) share a secret dance-handshake that looks not only cutesy, but calculated and wrong (why would kids today imitate “Laverne & Shirley” and “Saturday Night Fever”?). And yet the show asks us, with cheap and unconvincing sentiment, to remember childhood as a time in which we were “laughing all the time” and “dancing all the time.”

In the ‘80s, when yuppies ruled the Earth, the movie “Big” made sense as a longing for the mores of childhood, when judgments were not based on income but on likes and dislikes. The musical makes no such case except to suggest vaguely that the adult world is populated by a singularly unpleasant and phony race. The people who work at the toy company are backstabbing prigs (except when a dance number requires them to be “joyful”). Susan’s friends are petty, judgmental and materialistic, and MacMillan (Ron Holgate), the toy company owner, is nasty. He humiliates workers in front of their children and takes pride in the fact that he’s made his employees so nervous they’re “puking their guts out in the john.” But he’s meant to be sweet.

Some of the new production elements are equally wrongheaded. A dance number at the toy company called “Coffee, Black” begins, rationally, with Josh and Susan dancing because they are happy to see each other after spending the night before in bed. Josh’s bespectacled secretary, who is based on some ancient musical stereotype that now seems ferociously dimwitted, is so uptight and prim that her legs turn to rubber when she sees the couple kiss. Enter the boss, along with Josh’s co-workers. The boss embraces Josh, which should make all of them green with envy. But instead, the men break out into a dance lifted from a TV variety show, circa 1968. Then the women start dancing, and the secretary lets down her hair and tears open her blouse to reveal a black bustier. Why? As you learn early on in “big,” don’t ask.

Brett Tabisel reprises his role from the original production, in which, as the combustible Billy, he provided some of the only authentic boy energy in the show. Now, he just seems angry all of the time. And you can’t blame him.

* “big,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Wednesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $21-$52.50. (714) 740-7878, (213) 365-3500. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Joseph Medeiros: Young Josh

Brett Tabisel: Billy

Demaree Alexander: Cynthia Benson

Judy McLane: Mrs. Benson

Jim Newman: Josh Baskin

Nick Cokas: Paul

Jacquelyn Piro: Susan

Ron Holgate: MacMillan

With: Dale Hensley, Bruce Lineberry, Leslie Stevens, Dana Lynn Mauro, John Hoshko, Branch Woodman, Kelley Swaim, Sherri Edelen, Kevin Bernard, Matthew Breiner, Julie Kleiner, Andrew Redeker, Desta Sheridan, Beverly Edwards, Joe Paparella

A production of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and PACE Theatrical Group Inc. & Magicworks Entertainment. Book John Weidman. Music David Shire. Lyrics Richard Malty Jr. Directed by Eric D. Schaeffer. Choreography Karma Camp. Sets Zack Brown. Costumes William Ivey Long. Lights Ken Billington. Sound Peter Fitzgerald. Orchestrations Douglas Besterman. Production musical director Don Pippin. Musical director/conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos. Production stage manager Bill Roberts.