The novel Larry's Party was written by American-born Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Carol Shields and published in 1997. It met mixed reviews from the mainstream press, but among those who were impressed by it was Richard Ouzounian, who wrote a glowing review of the book in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Brent Carver as Larry Weller and Barbara Barsky as Charlotte

Three years later Ouzounian and his composer collaborator, Marek Norman, have opened their musical adaptation of the novel at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto, starring Tony-winner Brent Carver and staged by acclaimed Canadian director, Robin Phillips, produced by the Canadian Stage Company and hyped to the hilt.

Not having read the book (or not having done the homework - depends on which way you see it), I cannot tell whether it's actually faithful to the novel, or whether it's better or worse. My colleagues tell me it's quite close, except that Ouzounian has made the storyline linear, and the book used more flashbacks.

Whether that is the case or not does not matter - Larry's Party is muddled. This is not entirely the fault of its creators, whose straightforward score and book are, for the most part, pleasant though in dire need of variety. The score is not extraordinary, containing plenty of power ballads in which the characters emote rather than songs that drive the narrative forward.

The plot, for a musical, is rather unextraordinary. Larry is supposed to be an ordinary man, and that's fine. But the events in his life are also rather common - marriage, divorce, kids, stress. What would have made up Larry's Party more compelling is stronger characters. Larry's Party does try to be character driven, and yet, I left the theatre with a generic feeling toward Brent Carver and his interpretation, and puzzled by the strange direction of Robin Phillips.

The musical is bookended by the party in the title, and Larry Weller, a 50-year-old Winnipeg man, is looking into a tableau of his dining room full of old friends and family. The storyline goes back to when Larry is 26, getting his girlfriend, Dorrie, pregnant, marrying her, taking her on a honeymoon to England where at Hampton Court he discovers his lifelong passion of maze making.

Brent Carver as Larry Weller, Susan Gilmour as Dorrie and Company

The maze is the central metaphor of the play, and also of Larry's life. He can't find himself, and the set, the writing and the staging reflect this. It's blatantly obvious at the outset: you're looking at a black set with five steelwire frame walls reconfigured and contorted to suggest the maze while reassembling to form Larry's house, a café in Toronto, an airport, etc.

His life is supposed to be complicated by the maze, and we watch him as he becomes a successful maze maker after divorcing twice, having a son, and eventually moving to Toronto from Chicago. There's no real conflict, and Larry is just as uninteresting as the plot. The ending is predictable: Larry keeps singing "round and round again" and that should be taken note.

Phillips doesn't help, with distracting staging. We have Dorrie singing "What I Believe," and yet, I walked out not knowing what she believes because I was too busy watching the cast in the background doing a wave or aerobics or something like that. And when Larry's second wife sings "Happy Enough," there are two backup singers off on the other side of the stage, doing hand choreography, camping up the scene when it shouldn't be camped up.

Some songs miss, like one about Larry's penis. It doesn't fit, and only seems to hamper. The same goes for a song about how runner beans accidentally killed the grandmother.

The cast is nearly perfect. You may not completely buy into Carver's Larry (characterization problem), or like the material. You have Susan Gilmour, Julain Molnar, and Barbara Barsky - who gets to sing the best song of the show, the Sondheim-esque "Little Lost Lives" - and that compensates for almost everything else.

Larry's Party, at the Bluma Appel Theatre in the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, closed on February 3.

For more on Larry's Party and other shows in Toronto, visit On Stage Toronto