In a perfect world, the new musical “Lennon” would have little in common with the now-departed Suzanne Somers one-woman belly flop. John Lennon, after all, may be the most crucial figure in rock music, and Ms. Somers the most crucial figure in “She’s the Sheriff.” But when you visit the “Lennon” show’s Web site, the very first thing that pops up on the screen is an advertisement for the John Lennon Jewelry Collection, now available on QVC. That’s Ms. Somers’s domain, and it’s not the first time that the Lennon musical has been found rooting around in it.

Both shows share a similar stench of fake candor – with detail elided in favor of gooey, glossy sentiment. Mentions of infidelity stand in for truly unorthodox living arrangements (a critical affair with May Pang vanishes from the record), and the most important band breakup in history turns into a gentle parting of the ways.

Both productions also devolve into self-congratulation, if not outright hagiography. Lennon’s incendiary comment that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus is shown to be the out-of-context bit of celebrity haranguing that the press still loves to do today. But then the show undercuts the point by styling Lennon as a savior.

In interviews, Lennon was rarely pretentious, though the world lay itself at his feet. This musical gets pompous for him. Without his dry, self-puncturing humor and his songs belted out like popster dreck, the musical version of Lennon seems less like a man who made incredible music and more like a self-styled saint. Queasily enough, he has to share the halo with his widow – the second half of the show is one long paean to married life.

First, though, we zoom through that pesky Beatles period (in about 30 minutes, by my watch), with their “Ed Sullivan” performance re-enacted by the female members of the cast. Did you know Lennon was into peace? It’s no lie. Another 30 minutes escape while we hear about bed-ins and protests, though again specificity takes a backseat to tossing daisies. His political stances seem fuzzy and inexact – perhaps because the show text won’t let him say much more than “peace” and “nonviolence” – until we get to Yoko. Then love is all there is.

Writer/director Don Scardino turns the bio-musical into an “American Idol” theme night – all the pretty people get to sing something classic, and his widow acts as guest celebrity judge. Much of the creative team’s effort (starting with Mr. Scardino) has gone into divorcing “Lennon” from the hated “jukebox musical” phenomenon. The piece is more “Boy From Oz” than “All Shook Up,” which in terms of quality is like saying a movie is more “Ishtar” than “Anaconda.”

In what could be called a “glasses half-empty” staging gambit, the entire cast gets to play John Lennon, as long as they don his trademark lenses. At first, it seems like a pleasant notion, as well as a clever way to get out of using a celebrity impersonator. It falls down on a couple of fronts: Apparently, you can’t find nine people in New York who can do a decent Liverpool accent. Even the show-makers seem to gag on the “everybody can be John” gimmick, and by the second half of the play Will Chase has emerged as our Lennon front-runner. It doesn’t hurt that he looks the part, has the accent down, and shows an intimate, soulful charisma that the rest of the show can’t even approximate.

Rumblings, grumblings, and actual claps of thunder have been heard about the creative unrest behind “Lennon,” with producers hiring and losing show doctors and postponing their Broadway opening. Yoko Ono, who holds the rights to her husband’s solo catalog, has participated actively in the creation of the piece, and hisses about Ms. Ono’s influence sound almost as loud as when the Beatles broke up. When he lived, John Lennon himself made a marvelous case against the “Evil Yoko” image, reminding a Rolling Stone interviewer that if he couldn’t be brainwashed by the Maharishi, then his wife couldn’t have done it, either. Though he was strong enough to resist her, the wobblier makers of “Lennon” are not.

The songs Lennon wrote in his 30s were all wildly autobiographical, the louder ones inspired by primal scream therapy. Ms. Ono, as both muse and collaborator, obviously figured heavily. But the problem is balance. Her presence overwhelms the man himself – by the end, a 25-foot-high cutout of her head literally looms in the background, probably scaring the heck out of the band.

The cast, however, does have energy and effort on their side. The show throws away talent like Terrence Mann (who gets to be the comic-relief guy, pretending to be Ringo with diarrhea), while showcasing shameless over-actor Michael Potts and milquetoast Julie Danao-Salkin, who is far too cuddly to do a convincing Yoko. As we see in a brief clip at the end of the show, the secret to playing Yoko would be a thousand-yard stare and the occasional moment of quiet while sitting next to her talented husband. But in this musical she just can’t relinquish the spotlight.

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