Pieces like “Bernarda Alba” don’t make it easy for us Michael John LaChiusa fans.

As has been chronicled exhaustively in these and many other pages, Mr. LaChiusa is not a universally beloved writer of musicals. He writes a lot of them, for one thing, and he gets them produced both in New York and regionally, making him a target of considerable envy. (Opening in the same week as “Bernarda” are two shorter pieces, one on TV’s Nickelodeon and one with Audra McDonald at the Houston Grand Opera.)

The fact that none of these works has become a smash commercial success has tagged him with a permanent “critic’s darling” label, even though the reviews have hardly been consistently favorable. More to the point, he penned a much-publicized magazine article last year that bemoaned the state of the Broadway musical – and named names.

Because Mr. LaChiusa is so prolific, plenty of examples can be found to support both his fans and naysayers. His most recent musical, “See What I Wanna See,” was spotty, but its transcendent “Gloryday” sequence rivals “Hello Again” and parts of “First Lady Suite” among his finest moments. The turgid “Bernarda Alba,” by comparison, joins past missteps like “Little Fish” and “The Petrified Prince,” once again forcing Mr. LaChiusa’s supporters to become his apologists.

The most puzzling aspect of this garbled work, based on Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1936 drama of smoldering passion among the five cloistered daughters of the newly widowed title character, is the uncertain, almost baffled quality to Graciela Daniele’s contributions. While it’s hardly uncommon for a composer-lyricist and a director-choreographer to be at loggerheads, as has happened here, this sort of artistic collision generally stems from unfamiliarity with each other’s work. But “Bernarda Alba” marks the fifth collaboration between the two.

Ms. Daniele’s stylized movements have prevailed in some productions (“Chronicles of a Death Foretold”) and taken a backseat to Mr. LaChiusa’s unapologetically astringent melodies in others (particularly “Hello Again”). But the two have taken a step backward in terms of deciding whose strengths will fuel the evening.

The play starts on sure footing, as Phylicia Rashad’s indomitable Bernard leads the company in a flurry of claps and stomps that coalesce into the overture. But Ms. Daniele has primarily cast non-dancers as the Albas, and she frequently is forced either to supply the five daughters with embarrassing schoolgirl shenanigans or get them out of the way so that the servants – particularly the fiery Nancy Ticotin – can take over her bristling, flamenco-laced choreography.

The overall structure hews very closely to Garcia Lorca. Immediately after her husband’s funeral, Bernard orders the doors to her home locked shut, shielding her five daughters from the men of the village and particularly from one suitor of questionable character. The tension builds as the five young women – notably the frail but dowried Angustias (Saundra Santiago) and the impulsive, voluptuous Adela (Nikki M. James) – battle their spite, jealousy, and sexual yearnings.

These turbulent emotions can often teeter toward camp, as when Garcia Lorca opens his final act with the sound of an offstage stallion pounding the walls with lust. Ms. Daniele and Mr. LaChiusa take things in exactly the wrong direction by turning this into an extended dance sequence: Two dancers play the randy, stomping horse and his mare, while the five daughters sing breathlessly, “She wants him to stop / But not to stop.” We are now deep in the throes of camp – and this is before the demented grandmother (Yolande Bavan) bursts out of her room, clutching a shawl like a baby.

When a play has only one bare set (designed with austere elegance in this case by Christopher Barreca) and five of its six characters share the same central goal, those characters had better be delineated as clearly as possible. It can happen through movement or music, or through a combination of the two, but somebody needs to turn this quintet into Angustias, Magdalena, Amelia, Martirio, and Adela, not just a cluster of wronged women.

That differentiation never happens here, and it’s not the fault of the actresses – Sally Murphy, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and a wasted Judith Blazer in addition to Ms. Santiago and Ms. James.

Part of this muddle stems from a melodic hole in the play’s center: Even the truth-telling servant Poncia (a game Candy Buckley) gets more forceful, pungent material than Bernard herself. “When she is not onstage,” the novelist Ernesto Mestre-Reed has written about Garcia Lorca’s title character, “we anxiously await her return, which is what the shadow of every great tyrant wants: to be ever present, godlike.” This Bernard casts a dismayingly narrow shadow, despite an unflinching, august performance by Ms. Rashad. Aside from an alluring hybrid of Latin-inflected plainchant in the opening scenes, her musical sequences are among the play’s least interesting and often comment on rather than drive the action.

The closest Mr. LaChiusa and Ms. Daniele come to synthesizing their talents here is during an extended set piece in which the five daughters each interrupt their sewing and give voice to their individual longings. Mr. LaChiusa’s five solos are brief but haunting, melodically taut and emotionally revealing. Perhaps these five motifs will be the beginning of a new, more narratively rigorous approach?

No. The sequence ends, “Bernard Alba” resorts to more sassy Poncia and stern Bernard, Ms. Daniele’s flamenco flourishes continue on the periphery, and Stephen Strawbridge’s overemphatic lighting design drenches the stage in ominous shadows and scandalous reds. And Mr. LaChiusa’s stalwart supporters take some consolation in the fact that vindication may well come with his next project. In, say, a month or two.

***

Among the many joys of being a subsidized cultural organization is having the wherewithal to put out absolutely unessential things like the Lincoln Center Theater Review. More like the luxurious programs one gets in London than the typical Playbill, these thoughtfully assembled (John Guare is among the editorial staffers),impeccably designed companion volumes are available for $1 in the theatre lobby. When multiple LCT shows open at once, the publication divides its editorial attentions among them, but the latest issue is devoted entirely to “Bernard Alba,” and it is an absolute pleasure.

Jessica Hagedorn (“Dogeaters”) and Azar Nafisi (“Reading Lolita in Tehran”) are among the writers who pay homage to Garcia Lorca and particularly “The House of Bernard Alba.” Letters between Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali are excerpted, as is a charming prose poem by Philip Levine about a 1929 meeting between Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane. Other essays shed light on Garcia Lorca’s appeal to composers and the grotesque appeal of Bernard herself. (The Ernesto Mestre-Reed quotation from above comes from this essay.)

The whole thing looks gorgeous and reads like a dream. Among the major nonprofits, Roundabout also puts out a companion volume, but the material tends toward puff pieces about the work on display. (The “Bernard Alba” review does devote the largest chunk of text to an interview with Mr. LaChiusa, albeit a wide-ranging one conducted by Mr. Guare.) Even when the plays themselves fall short, Lincoln Center Theatre sets a lofty example with these publications, one that Roundabout, Manhattan Theater Club, and the rest of the New York theatre scene would do well to replicate.

Until April 9 (150 W. 65th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, 212-239-6200).