THEATER REVIEW : Half-Baked ‘Mud Pies’ : Despite solid acting, Lori Street-Tubert’s musical about growing old fails to sustain a dramatic thread.

In a program note, playwright Lori Street-Tubert states that “old folks” have always held a fascination for her: “I’ve had . . . a need to communicate that ‘we’ are ‘them,’ and ‘they’ are ‘us.’ ”

Street-Tubert tries to cover that gap in her new musical “Mud Pies and White Dresses” at Group Repertory Theatre, but doesn’t take the idea anywhere near her goal. Even having mature performers play their characters at all ages, from childhood on, doesn’t make the point nearly as strongly and richly as the writer intends.

That older people were once young is a given. That they had lives, too, is self-evident. King Lear was once young, so was Willy Loman.

All Street-Tubert has done is show us the life of her protagonist, Sunny (Florence Schauffler), from her childhood friendship with Merry (Joan Crosby), through her disastrous marriage to a drunken, philandering cowboy and her time as a single-parent factory worker, to her bitter and regretful old age.

Considering the lightness and shallowness of Street-Tubert’s book, Olive Higgins Prouty did the same thing with more power and drama in “Stella Dallas.”

The musical’s score, written by the playwright’s brother, Rob Simbeck, doesn’t add much. It’s generic country-western, and few of the songs do much to advance the story. Several seem used only to give life to the production, such as “Country Superstar,” “Is There Anything a Stranger Could Do?” and “Sweetest Peach.” And those are not sung by the protagonists, but by a crowd-pleasing cowboy quartet, in particular by big-voiced Paul Cady.

*

Shandi Sinnamon is a fine narrator, and sings several numbers in high style, but like all narrators, only keeps the playwright from having to disguise her exposition in dialogue and action. The whole cast sings the simplistic numbers well, as a matter of fact, and gives solid performances, even though they cannot sustain much of a dramatic thread through the many tiny scenes.

Schauffler and Crosby stand out as bosom friends through the years, and Nora Meerbaum is very funny as Sunny’s stardom-seeking younger sister. Geraldine Allen is delightful as Sunny’s bubbly sister-in-law Rose, but Dwight Larick and Mearl Allen look uncomfortable as Rose’s bubblier husband and Sunny’s alcoholic cowboy husband.

Street-Tubert also directed the staging, but as is usually the case, should have given over the task to a fresh eye. Her tempos between songs are disastrously slow and ponderous, and her blocking is often distracting.

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WHERE AND WHEN:

What: “Mud Pies and White Dresses.”

Location: Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood.

Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays. Indefinitely.

Price: $12.

Call: (818) 769-7529.