There are plenty of fireworks in the new Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but sadly they’re all offstage. For this production marking Scarlett Johansson’s return to Broadway after winning a Tony Award for A View From the Bridge, director Rob Ashford has pulled out all the stops. Music, sound and lighting effects are employed to extravagant effect, but they do little to cover up the listlessness at the show’s core.

Clearly designed as a star vehicle for the white-hot Johansson—this is the third Broadway production of the play in less than a decade—this is more of a cat on a tepid tin roof. The actress, so impressive a few years ago in Arthur Miller’s play, seems to be struggling here. Her voice reduced to a husky rasp, she races through her lines in the first act as if desperate to get the whole thing over with. Although she’s more effective in the climactic scene, her Maggie never fully projects the necessary sultriness and wiliness as she desperately attempts to seduce her disaffected husband. Even more strangely, the staging somehow manages to strip her of her natural sexiness.

Benjamin Walker (Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson) fares even less well as the neutered, alcoholic Brick, bereft since the death of his best friend Skipper. (The production originally featured an actor playing the character as a ghost, a device that has wisely been jettisoned.) The tall, lanky Walker certainly has the physical attributes for the part, amply revealed since he spends much of the proceedings clad only in a towel. But he overdoes the character’s morose depression to such a degree that he’s also boring and charisma-free. The staging also does him no favors, as he’s constantly limping around the set with his crutches and frequently being thrown about as if he was a rag doll and not a strapping former athlete.

Scottish actor Ciaran Hinds is a formidable and imposing Big Daddy, and his lengthy second act confrontation with Walker’s Brick is the most dramatically arresting part of the evening. But Hinds also emphasizes the character’s fearsome bluster to such a degree that he fails to convey the humor and larger-than-life qualities that such predecessors as Burl Ives and James Earl Jones brought to the part. The ever-reliable Debra Monk is a suitably pathetic Big Mama, while Emily Bergl makes the scheming, ridiculously fertile Mae more appealing than she has a right to be.

Director Ashford tries to ratchet up the intensity by constantly moving the actors around at a feverish clip and having them scream at the top of their lungs, but the results are mostly enervating. This is a shockingly unmoving Cat, one that keeps the audience removed from the intense machinations taking place. Christopher Oram’s set design, looking more like a grand ballroom than a bedroom in a Southern mansion, is similarly both over-the-top and ineffectual.

Thanks to Johansson’s star power, the revival is bound to do well at the box-office. But this misconceived, undercooked Cat mainly demonstrates that it may be time to give this oft-performed warhorse of a classic a well-deserved rest.

Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St. 877-250-2929, www.catonahottinroofbroadway.com. Through March 30.