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England and France have never been fond of each other, and for centuries the strain has given writers plenty to work with. One such writer was Baroness Emmuska Orczy, who created The Scarlet Pimpernel in book form, then on stage. Then, propagating like Danielle Steele, she cranked out eleven sequels.

The musical adaptation by Nan Knighton and Jekyll and Hyde composer Frank Wildhorn opened on Broadway in 1997 to lukewarm reviews. In a weird turn of events, it closed and opened again about a year later at another Broadway house with different actors, a few songs cut or added and a scaled-down design. Resuscitating the body again after more cosmetic surgery, Knighton and Wildhorn mounted it a third time on Broadway, this time starring Ron Bohmer as Sir Percival Blakeney.

Bohmer inhabits the role again at the New Theatre, with Sandra Joseph (Mrs. Bohmer, as the program repeatedly points out) as his confused French wife, Marguerite St. Just. The large cast also includes locals Lori Blalock and Charles Fugate.

France is imploding. After the English Percival loses some friends to the guillotine, he decides to pose as the titular spy, enlisting several of his mates in a plot to infiltrate Paris. Considering the era, their ruse is quite effective: They gay it up as a swarm of “fops” — the French would never suspect such nelly boys could have a bit of revolutionary in them. In the first song to have much life, “The Creation of Man,” the guys don animal-print coats and breeches and become a chorus line of fey Liberaces.

Bohmer (whose character, for a purported hero, is quite unlikable), Joseph and Timothy Noland (as Percival’s nemesis, Chauvelin) have fine voices and a style of delivery that makes Broadway costume dramas a hale and hearty tourist attraction. But there’s hardly a pretty melody to be found, something rather difficult for director Richard Carrothers and choreographer Treva Farrell to overcome. Knighton’s lyrics are of the “gaze-haze-days” school of Poetry 101, and Wildhorn’s music tends toward the bombastic. At their worst, as in the opening number of Act Two, we learn that the Scarlet Pimpernel is here … there … everywhere. Great musical numbers advance the story with a surplus of emotion; here, they point out the obvious.

Gregory Hill’s sets are impressive, especially a plush theater backdrop with a twisted heart at its center and a prison facade that looks like a gaping beast. Kimberly Wick and Mary Traylor’s costumes are equally complex. It’s a pity the nationally known composers didn’t share the local artisans’ dedication to their craft.