“Mimi Le Duck,” the new musical now playing at New World Stages, has a catalogue of the most ordinary songs imaginable. The orchestrations are thin, the singing is mostly unremarkable. Its chief attraction — an enchanting Eartha Kitt — is seldom onstage.

Yet despite its severe limits as a theatrical production,”Mimi Le Duck” is a remarkably transparent look at a certain American sensibility. Its book and lyrics, by the Hawaiian writer Diana Hansen-Young (who came to New York at the age of 50), take an unapologetically America-centric view of European adventure. In “Mimi Le Duck,” a woman goes abroad and finds an Epcot Center version of Paris — where, as it turns out, the Parisians have good solid American values.

A self-aware production of “Mimi Le Duck” might have been able to bring a hilarious edge to the adventures of these self-satisfied Americans in Paris. But under Thomas Caruso’s direction, it’s all earnestness and big ballads of self-discovery — except, that is, for the all-too-brief interludes provided by the sly Ms. Kitt.

With a sigh, then, one has to take “Mimi Le Duck” straight — as the tale of Miriam (Annie Golden), a Mormon wife and mom whose duck paintings are sold on QVC. Facing her 25th wedding anniversary, Miriam (who has an artistic bent) finally snaps. She’s leaving her bland CPA husband and Ketchum, Idaho, behind. “No jello and no more frumpy clothes!” she sings. “No more Disney, no Wal Mart, and no more Cheerios!” She’s off to Gay Paree, escorted by the ghost of Ernest Hemingway (doing cosmic penance for his Ketchum suicide), to discover her inner Mimi.

Only once she gets to Paris, her bohemian pals start urging her to get back together with her ex.

There are so many things wrong with this development, it’s hard to know where to begin. First off, it would be hard to find a bohemian anywhere that would urge Miriam to go back to a boring blowhard who orders her home “cause I’m the man and you must obey.” And structurally, it’s a huge misstep — just when Mimi starts to get interesting as a character, she’s launched on an act-long trajectory back to Dullsville.

Moreover, putting the butterfly back into its conventional cocoon doesn’t exactly create a great musical theater arc. Imagine Maria teaching the von Trapp children to sing, wooing the captain, then deciding to go back to the convent. Or Tony and Maria calling it quits, ’cause they want to respect their families’ wishes. Now you’re in the headspace of “Mimi Le Duck.”

What’s so puzzling about “Mimi Le Duck” is that it’s bursting with the rhetoric of self-transformation. Characters are constantly talking about leaving their conventional lives and becoming who they’ve always wanted to be. But their notions of the artistic life are positively quaint — and of life — are almost quaint. A former craft-fair regular hides her glue gun and poses as an “artist” by sculpting a clay phallus. An oyster-shucker is rendered “bohemian” by the fact that he cross-dresses — though, of course, sexually speaking, he’s a lamb.

Ms. Hansen-Young’s bohemian trappings are essentially the Technicolor conceits of Gene Kelly’s “An American in Paris.” The set (by John Arnone) is an accurate reflection of this postcard Paris, with its fragments of Toulouse-Lautrec figures and Eiffel Tower legs.

Only one person suggests a deeper, darker Paris — the kind of Paris where the too-rich pleasures compensate temporarily for a persistent melancholy. That’s Eartha Kitt, of course, who, at 79, seems to be almost giving a seminar on how to get a crowd to snap to attention. It’s that voice — that purring, whisky voice. And that highbeam gaze, so commanding that people don’t dare look away. And it’s that urbane wit, complete with the sort of deadpan delivery that turns awestruck fans into laughing admirers.

Ms. Kitt is cast as a retired torch singer here, but of course, she’s playing herself in what amounts to a three-number cabaret act that’s surgically appended to “Mimi Le Duck.” Briefly, while she’s onstage, things perk up. (Her first number is by far the best of Brian Feinstein’s songs.) When Ms. Kitt flashes a bit of leg at poor inhibited Mimi, it’s clear what Paris has that Idaho doesn’t.

But Ms. Kitt’s subversive jolts notwithstanding, this is really an ode to a certain subset of American values: getting back together with your spouse (even if he’s a bully or a thief) and making it work, “finding yourself” in a self-help book sort of way. The Mormons stay on in Paris, and even Hemingway cheers them on. It’s one thing to fundamentally misread Hemingway, Paris, and bohemian life. But to turn countercultural figures into cheerleaders along the path to conventionality — well, that’s a move worthy of Disney.

Open run (340 W. 50th St., between Eighth and Ninth avenues, 212-239-6200).