I believe my first Dolly was Betsy Blair at Musicarnival in the early '60s. This experience crystallized in me a maniacal matchmaking tendency. But, like so many noble professions, matchmaking has been usurped by the Internet.

So I've switched focus. Working with what I know, I attempt to mate the right musical with the right audience. Following this line of thought, when a cheerful Ellen Degeneres look-alike clerk at Half-Price Books waylaid me for a recommendation for a good evening of theater, all my instincts went into overdrive. Do I send this presumably bright twentysomething to Beck Center's production of My Favorite Year?

This 1992 musical is based on a 1982 film, concerning an incident in Mel Brooks' life as a writer on The Sid Caesar Show when Errol Flynn made an inebriated guest appearance. Librettist Joseph Dougherty, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens' adaptation emerges as a rather tattered, but sometimes affecting valentine. Its heart lies in odes to many lost worlds of the '50s. These include a glamorous, almost mythic Manhattan, the innocence and adulation of youth, the vaudeville antics of early live TV, and the palpitations inspired by tuneful old-style romps.

But the theatergoing recommendation was a tough call for, in spite of its sweetness and rueful nostalgia, the show never quite clicks. Its original Lincoln Center production nose-dived before the ink was dry on its souvenir program. The present Beck production only periodically sparkles and pops in the manner of a rained-on fireworks display.

Though problematic, there's yet great potential here — which, however, is not nearly realized by director William Roudebush's inability to shape a musical confection. It's essential in a work that rhapsodizes the joie de vivre of early live television that there be pacing, comic invention and driving energy. Roudebush has laid down a soggy turf that not only hinders a cast of decidedly mixed effectiveness, but also prevents that most skillful choreographer, Martin Cespedes, from generating his usual spark. It seems that every adept performance here is nullified by an equally lifeless one.

So even when Matthew Wright in the Flynn role registers just the right charisma and dash, Shawn Galligan, as the young narrating protagonist, drains the evening of an absolutely necessary wistfulness and eager-beaver enthusiasm with his damaging lack of presence and musical ability. On the strictly positive side, there's Jean Zarzour's racy mix of schmaltz and moxie as the ur-Jewish mother, Rachel Spence's uncanny and exuberant resurrection of the Imogene Coca character, Jim McCormack's kingly girth as a rollicking Lear of a writer, and Tricia O'Toole's thoroughbred innocence as the Flynn stand-in's young daughter.

Balancing all aspects, my final recommendation to the clerk was to indeed take in the current staging for its meager charms, but only if she eventually experienced the film and listened to the original cast album to see what she was missing.

My Favorite Year: Through June 8 at The Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, 216.521.2540.