When the news came that the men who wrote “Crocodile Rock” would team up with the team that created “Beauty and the Beast” (Disney’s first and worst foray onto Broadway) to adapt Anne Rice’s homoerotic vampire novels, the first question to arise was: What could possibly go right?

But “Lestat” is the least awful vampire musical in years! How’s that for a blurb?

Even if the latest schlock opera does catch up to and even overtake Frank Wildhorn’s recent “Dracula” in narrative ineptitude by the time it limps to its head-scratcher of a finale, Elton John’s score actually rises to mediocrity at one or two points, buoyed by a handful of admirably committed performers (though the unspeakable “Dance of the Vampires” still owns bragging rights as the sharpest stake into the heart of Broadway).

Finding even these minor respites takes some real searching, surrounded as they are by Linda Woolverton’s mirthless book and a litany of interchangeable pop ballads by Mr. John and his erstwhile writing partner, Bernie Taupin.

But a few things even go almost right, especially early on. Graphic-novel hero Dave McKean has designed some creepy projections to accompany the vampire attacks.The orchestrations (by Steve Margoshes, Guy Babylon, and Bruce Coughlin) have a suitably gothic plushness, although they run aground when Lestat and his undead companions reach New Orleans. Hugh Panaro sinks his teeth into the title role with a ringing pop-opera tenor and at least a modicum of sinister appeal, and he gets decent support from Carolee Carmello as his voracious mother. Beyond that, there’s … um … well …

Did I mention the projections?

Actually, the rest of the physical production is surprisingly rickety, with roaming faux-stone pillars that make the Palace Theatre stage look like a really big unfinished basement. (One recent performance was rife with audible backstage crashes, flubbed lighting cues, and wayward microphones.) Mood is everything in Ms. Rice’s plummy, overheated novels – an acquired taste that this reader has yet to acquire – and director Robert Jess Roth never decides whether he’s working on a thriller, albeit one without thrills, or a campy comedy, albeit an unfunny one.

When she isn’t tossing out “What Color Is Your Coffin?” self-help snippets like “You have eternity – make something of it,” Ms. Woolverton is scrambling to fit in a tremendously unwieldy amount of information. As recent musicals like “Jane Eyre” and “Little Women” have shown, fitting even one much-loved novel onto the stage can be difficult. “Lestat” aims to fit in two entire Rice books and snip pets of a third. (People whose exposure to the saga is limited to “Interview With the Vampire” must wait until Act II to see that material.) This leaves Ms. Woolverton with barely enough time to throw a revolving door of one-named guys with ponytails onto the stage.

To make several very long stories short: Lestat (Mr. Panaro) goes to Paris and becomes a vampire. (This has something to do with killing wolves. If Mr. Roth understands what, that makes one of us.) His response: “For here I am, a thing of darkness / Thrown from this ungodly swoon, / Immortal from a savage kiss, / Kept from my eventual tomb.”

He converts a mortal into vampireness; once the two eventually squabble, Lestat converts somebody else. Among his enlistees: his dying mother (Ms. Carmello, who makes a strong impression in Act I before vanishing for good), the tormented Louis (Jim Stanek), and Claudia, a 10-year-old girl (Allison Fischer) who develops a murderous case of reverse Peter Pan syndrome. And then there’s an enigma-spouting black vampire and a campy mean vampire. This all takes place over some 300 years, a period that often seems to unfold in real time.

With just two or three exceptions – a passable ballad for Lestat called “Right Before My Eyes,” a mildly catchy up-tempo song for young Claudia – Messrs. John and Taupin’s songs are repetitive both musically and dramatically, echoing sentiments that had just been stated. And with Mr.Taupin’s rhymes crashing and thudding so egregiously (one song tries to make a go of pairing “youth” with “loose” and “adore” with “soul”), mightn’t it have been better to not bother with rhymes at all? Why not just let the characters spout free verse? Or hum or whistle or make bat noises or something? And when will these producers realize that musicals about vampires are about as scary as your typical Count Chocula cereal ad?

Early on, when “Lestat” still shows glimmers of being a good old bad old time, Ms. Carmello’s character declaims: “When it was over, you felt like you had been to the circle of Hell and come back out.” Easy for her to say. She gets to sit out the second act.

Open run (1564 Broadway at 47th Street, 212-307-4100).