With a radical revival of West Side Story just over the Broadway horizon, it seems like hubris to challenge that musical’s updated take on Romeo and Juliet with yet another one. But that’s just what producers are doing in Romeo and Bernadette: A Musical Tale of Verona and Brooklyn, a far-too-cheesy slice of Italian-American stereotypes set primarily in 1960 Brooklyn and featuring a score based on classic Italian tunes. (In one of the best comic moments, though, it also gives a nod to West Side Story.)

You’d think that, by now, it would be politically incorrect—even in a spoof—to keep harping on the mobster connections and ethnic patois of people baked in the same brick oven that produced the “The Sopranos,” the Coppola and Scorsese movies, “Jersey Shore,” and countless others. That, though, is the raison d’être of Romeo and Bernadette, which, despite a few chuckles and some quality singing, is trite, clichéd, and nonsensical, offering little of value to the recipe.