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"The Baker's Wife" has a checkered and long history. Numerous reboots have failed to nail a Broadway date even though the show, based on an old French film, boasts strong parentage with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz ("Wicked") and book by Joseph Stein ("Fiddler on the Roof").

Artistry's production, which opened Saturday at the Bloomington Center for the Arts, illustrates why this "hidden gem," as advocates call it, is both hidden and a gem. Schwartz's score, though overwritten in an attempt to pump air into the musical, has some lovely tunes and sophisticated dissonances. Director Ben McGovern cast Bradley Green­wald in the central role of an amiable baker who feeds a small French town and Jill Iverson as the wife whose dalliances provide the dramatic flywheel. Each of these performers is strong-voiced and more than capable. Aly Westberg, as the show's melodic host, is the best of the supporting cast.

Westberg's character, in fact, opens the proceedings with a charming "Chanson" as she wanders amid the denizens of her small French village and introduces us to the idea that small things can matter greatly to everyday life. It's a proposition we're willing to entertain and things seem to be off to a good start.

Then the cracks appear.

The folks in this village are cranky because they have no bread. They spin their tires in this state of distemper until the new baker arrives with his young wife. The hounds immediately leer at her, and we are set off on a journey of misogyny, betrayal, disaster and reconciliation. When the wife runs off with a local cad, the townfolk care less that the baker has lost his beloved and more that his heartbreak prevents him from making bread.

Stein and Schwartz present this work in epic proportions that the small story cannot support. Beyond the bloated length (2 ½ hours? Really?), songs that might touch our hearts with subtlety become scorching ballads. Music director Anita Ruth and McGovern seem to be all in with this clattering program and eschew nuance and emotional texture that falls south of full-throated passion.

Greenwald's baker is a curious, Chaplinesque figure. He's friendly, if a little stilted, and uncertain of his new home. When he sings, he leaves little doubt that he's one of the best stage voices in the Twin Cities. Iverson, too, has great pipes but succumbs to the huff-and-puff sensibility in McGovern's staging. To be fair to the director, Schwartz and Stein certainly pushed him there.

There's something exciting about the prospect of seeing the rare show that has an interesting and obscure lineage. That eager anticipation, however, is no guarantee that your curiosity will be rewarded.

Graydon Royce is a longtime Star Tribune theater critic. He can be reached at roycegraydon@gmail.com.