Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale in The Bridges of MadisonCounty
(©Joan Marcus)

Is it too much to ask of a show called The Bridges of Madison County that we actually see one of the covered bridges that provide its title?

Sure, Michael Yeargan’s set design dutifully represents one of the archetypal structures with a series of arches. But much like this simultaneously intimate and overblown musical adapted from Robert James Waller’s gazillion-selling 1992 novel, it feels woefully inadequate.

Millions of people, probably most of them middle-aged women, swooned to the literary source material which was also made into a 1995 film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, with Meryl Streep in the role of Francesca, the Italian war bride who has long settled into a boring marriage with an Iowa farmer.

This musical version featuring a score by Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Parade) and book by Marsha Norman (‘night Mother, The Color Purple) is no doubt aiming for a similar demographic. But from the plaintive sound of a cello in its opening moments to its ghostly reunion between the ill-fated lovers at the end, it strikes nary an unpredictable note.

The show directed by Bartlett Sher, first seen at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, concerns the fateful meeting between Francesca (Kelli O’Hara), married for eighteen years to the inattentive Bud (Hunter Foster), and Robert Kinkaid (Stephen Pasquale), a ruggedly handsome National Geographic photographer who has arrived in the flatlands of Iowa to photograph its celebrated covered bridges. One day Robert literally shows up on her doorstep, with Francesca, whose husband and two children have left for several days to attend a state fair, eagerly welcoming him in.

It doesn’t take long for Francesca and Robert, fueled by a bottle of brandy and some tender slow-dancing to the radio, to embark on a torrid affair that reawakens passionate nature that has been smothered by years of household drudgery. Lying to her husband Bud (Hunter Foster) and evading the suspicions of her busybody and rather jealous neighbor Marge (Cass Morgan), Francesca begins to seriously contemplate Robert’s offer to run away with him and share his wanderlust.

The schematic storyline was given great resonance in Eastwood’s subtle film adaptation. But there’s little subtlety in this show which hammers home its romantic themes in oppressive fashion. Brown’s score which aspires to operatic heights with its assemblage of soaring aria-like ballads is lush and melodic. But it eventually wears you down with its overly heightened emotionalism that is only partially alleviated by a country-flavored numbers.

Norman strains the simple storyline with a surfeit of extraneous characters and situations, including subplots involving the relationship between Marge and her common-sense spouting husband Charlie (Michael X. Martin) and endless segues to Francesca’s family at the state fair and the sibling rivalry between her daughter Carolyn (Caitlin Kinnunen) and son Michael (Derek Klena). Most egregiously, the main action is followed by a lengthy melodramatic coda filling us in on the two principal characters’ lives after their four day encounter. What might have made for an affecting 90-minute chamber musical is here stretched out to a numbingly bloated two hours and forty minutes.

Sher’s staging is also overly fussy, with scenery constantly being wheeled back and forth and the minor characters observing the action as if they were audience members who were mistakenly assigned onstage seats.

O’Hara (affecting a reasonably convincing Italian accent) and Pasquale make for an attractive couple, and their chemistry—they also co-starred in the off-Broadway musical Far From Heaven—is palpable. Both deliver strong, affecting performances that are enhanced by their superb vocalizing of the demanding score, including a second act ballad, “One Second and a Million Miles,” which justifiably stops the show. Strong contributions are also made by Foster, who provides unexpected shadings to his potentially stereotypical role, and Morgan, very amusing as the overly curious neighbor.

But for all its blatant attempts to tug at the heartstrings, The Bridges of Madison Country remains curiously unmoving. It’s as if its creators assumed that the source material was so potent in its melodramatic themes that all they had to do was accentuate them. But sometimes less is more.

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.