With its jostling mosh pit of a crowd, strobe lights, feel-itin-your-spine bass boost, and scantily-clad girls wriggling around in water, “Fuerzabruta” would make a great nightclub concept. But as it opened last night at the Daryl Roth Theatre — as a $70 night at the theater — it’s unsatisfying: an undercooked, smallish portion of “Cirque du Soleil.”

“Fuerzabruta” (“Brute Force”) arrives in New York from Argentina prestamped with the De La Guarda brand. The new show has one of the same creators (Diqui James) as De La Guarda’s 1998 hit “Villa Villa,” the same warehouse-like theater, and the same basic staging concept, with the audience standing throughout the show while the performance takes place overhead.

Almost a decade after De La Guarda took Union Square by storm, none of this feels especially fresh. And unlike “Villa Villa,” which focused on aerialists swinging from the rafters, “Fuerzabruta” is a curiously earthbound show. Though harnesses are employed with some frequency, there is little pure flight. Instead, there’s a lot of standing, running, dancing, and crawling on giant platforms above the spectators’ heads.

The result is a spectacle that’s seldom spectacular. No doubt it requires athleticism for a man dressed in a suit and tie to run on a giant treadmill, but it’s a brand of athleticism accessible to a mere mortal. Watching the performers bust through giant disintegrating walls of Styrofoam and paper is not such a big deal, either (though the eerie echoes of September 11, 2001, inherent in the cascading scraps of paper are unwelcome). A man attached by his waist from an overhead aquarium seems brave, but not necessarily highly trained. And an extended sequence in which women dive and skid through an inch or so of water on a transparent overhead platform is more titillating than awe-inspiring.

Occasionally an act is truly spectacular. The sight of two women in harnesses, their bodies parallel to the floor, chasing each other around a giant Mylar curtain, running and somersaulting against its wispy fabric, is breathtaking.

But “Fuerzabruta” lacks the alchemy that would transform this sequence of cirque-like acts into a unified theatrical experience. If any story seems to build, it’s a simplistic tale of the workings of “brute force.” The performers get slammed by gusts from wind machines, doused by engineered rain, smacked by false walls, shot by unseen gunmen. Sometimes, they simply fling their bodies at the nearest hard surface, landing with a loud thwack.

The thwacks are part of a master plan to keep the crowd pumped up at all times. To counteract the restlessness of a group of people standing together in a confined space for 65 minutes, a booth full of disc jockeys periodically dials up the volume on the club-like score (by Gaby Kerpel). And occasionally the crowd gets sprayed with water.

Meanwhile, a team of stagehands directs the human traffic, herding people out of the way as new sets advance and recede. The movement of these enormous pieces — and the corresponding itinerant motion of the crowd— feels like a technical necessity, not an artistic one. If anything, for the audience, moving around is a hassle; it’s no fun getting squished like a fan at a European soccer match as a giant machine rolls past your nose.

Near the end of “Fuerzabruta,” the transparent overhead platform on which the bathing beauties frolic is lowered down so that spectators can actually touch the bottom of the platform — and for that matter, look into the eyes of the flirtatious women who are crawling inches from their faces. You are close enough to see the polka dots on a performer’s panties, and this is meant, one supposes, to make you feel involved with the show.

Of course, having the performer right in your face is the antithesis of creating illusion. “Fuerzabruta,” with its blunt, brusque style, is not much concerned with illusion. In lieu of a theatrical experience, it offers nervous energy — booming bass, sprays of water, fake gunshots. But ultimately a steady diet of nervous energy and repetitive, so-so acts makes for an insubstantial, fidgety hour.

Until February 17 (20 Union Square East at 15th Street, 212-239-6200).