Alley Cats, The Musical is a theatrical furball, often irritating and hard to digest. Intended as a campy tribute to showbiz, the homegrown effort is often too earnest for a send-up.

Co-produced by the writers and Hoarse Raven (Tony n' Tina's Wedding), Alley Cats tries to set Broadway tradition on its ear by making all the relationships gay or lesbian, but it proves just as sappy and stereotyped as its hetero counterparts.

Under Michael Fera's enthusiastic if uneven direction, a cast of 19 slogs through 160 minutes about the eccentric occupants of an east-side Vancouver alley (the evocative set is by Lance Cardinal).

When "battleaxe butch" Hilda (Lea DeLaria) decides on demolition, her neighbours rally around two cat-loving ladies (Patti Allan and Kirsten Van Ritzen) to save the 'hood.

DeLaria looks and acts like Jackie Gleason. A top-billed standup comic and Tony-winner, she should know better than to score cheap laughs with ad-libs that halt the already faltering pace.

Rex Harrington as Tad, the black-clad wrecker who runs Men With Balls, provides some genuinely funny moments when he spoofs his own National Ballet career. He is at the centre of the first real showstopper, a tight Village People-style cowboy quartet, and his acting is cute in an ironic, slouchy James Dean fashion.

There's hardly room to swing a cat on the Vogue Theatre stage, but choreographers Jeff Hyslop and Shelley Stewart Hunt give the cast inventive steps in a small space. As for the show's spoken dialogue, much of it is merely self-conscious as it fills the gaps between songs. And some of the loaded sexual innuendo delivers just too much information and not enough comedy, no matter the gender bias.

Every musical genre from gospel to torch song gets an airing. Scored by Stephen Smith, the numbers seem derivative, which might be intentional. The in-jokes are certainly fun to spot--Felicia wears Judy Garland's famous ruby slippers, and the alley ad agency is called One Singular Sensation, after the song from A Chorus Line.

In their lyrics, writers B. K. Anderson and K. E. Zemliya alternate between banal rhyming couplets and wittier Sondheim-style sentiments. These were not always well served by the performers, who perhaps suffered opening-night jitters: Some sang off-key or out of tempo. But there were toe-tapping moments when the singers and the band (directed by Douglas Macaulay) were cookin'.

DeLaria shows off a lusty pair of lungs in The Biggest Little Teashop in this Town and Tortoiseshell Shocked. Peter Jorgensen's tuneful, strong voice contrasts well with his milksop character in You Might Be the One, sung with Harrington. Act Two's ensemble treatment of swingy It's the Truth is the show's best.

After that, Alley Cats limps along despite fine character work by local actors Cailin Stadnyk as a failed chorine, Denis Simpson and Simon Webb as a feuding, fussy middle-aged pair, Gwynyth Walsh as a blond femme waitress, Patti Allan as a cat-loving televangelist and Meghan Gardiner as a biker chick. This musical needs to go back to the scratching post.

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