Photo by Chris Bennion.

Life stories are a tricky business. Every individual weathers enough ups and downs to have their own experience merit the telling – but that doesn’t mean that all lives translate to cogent dramatic arcs. Aimee Semple McPherson, however, one of the more colorful and dynamic personalities to emerge from the early twentieth century, should evade that pitfall. And yet the new musical, Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson, can’t seem to do its subject justice.

Linear but unfocused, Scandalous is the pet project of talk show personality Kathie Lee Gifford, who purportedly spent nearly a decade getting this show to the Great White Way,  and wrote the show’s book and lyrics in addition to contributing music to David Pomeranz’s and David Friedman’s serviceable score. Perhaps Gifford’s adoration of McPherson, an evangelist who founded California’s Foursquare Church and became an early media impresario, blinded her to her heroine’s weak spots. Or Foursquare’s involvement as producer ridded the show of any objectivity. Either way, what should be a warts-and-all bio-musical ultimately airbrushes away any blemishes on its titular subject.

Carolee Carmello, the gutsy and glamorous Broadway belter, takes on McPherson, narrating her life story from its early beginnings as a Canadian teenager all the way through her polarizing stature as a pill-popping diva. But Gifford, making good on the adage that “the devil is in the details,” leaves too many crucial details out to keep McPherson looking like an angel. Her husbands disappear in brackets: She falls in love with Robert Semple (Edward Watts) after catching his Pentecostal “holy rollers” tour, but after a trip to China, Robert dies of malaria. A second marriage to accountant Harold McPherson (Andrew Samonsky) ends in divorce; though the two were married for nearly a decade, the man merits not one scene or line of dialogue.

Watts and Samonsky return for the show’s second act, in which McPherson’s traveling ministry has transported her to the belly of the beast. A natural for Hollywood, she ended up in Echo Park, where she launched her Angelus Temple and wed one of her choir-men, David Hutton (Watts again, making Hutton out to be far more of a model than the real version ever was). It’s also where she ran off with radio technician Kenneth Ormiston (also Samonsky). This is a cloudy period in history, as McPherson claimed to have been abducted in a story riddled with holes. Ultimately, she and her mother, Minnie (an imperious Candy Buckley) were charged with obstruction of justice in 1926 for her odd disappearance. It’s this trial that lends itself the show’s title and Gifford’s framing device, but Scandalous offers no enlightenment on what really happened.

Carmello does everything right – she ages believably from teenage to middle age, she belts McPherson’s bombastic but generic-sounding numbers to the high heavens, she even manages to sell her character’s “hey where did that come from?” addiction to barbiturates. But this superb, commanding talent can only ace what she has to work with, and the one thing Gifford hasn’t provided for Scandalous is a soul. We rarely feel that religion ever matters to her, and her demons are merely name-checked, not explored. And we never see how she became the titanic presence she did. Why was she able to hold sway over such a congregation? (One thing they do give her? A fun ally in Roz Ryan’s delicious turn as madam Emma Jo Schaeffer.) Armstrong doesn’t do much to shape the proceedings either; the show hurtles through McPherson’s life, Wikipedia-style, though it shoves all the juicy stuff under the rug – and offstage. Scandalous gives and takes in all the wrong places.

Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson

Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, www.scandalousonbroadway.com

Photo Courtesy of Nicholas Ballasy

I have to be honest and say — while admittedly a bit out of the pop culture loop at times — I lost track of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet” about six years ago.

Apparently, what “Rolling Stone” calls the singer’s “epic opus” has not fizzled out alongside my interest. On the contrary, it’s going big places, perhaps even the biggest of places.

Yes, “Trapped in the Closet” is going to Broadway.

At a recent screening of the latest installment of his “hip-hopera” at New York City’s Landmark Sunshine Cinemas, Kelly said “Trapped in the Closet” began as a “silly” idea without much possibility for traction. During the Q&A session, he reportedly smoked a lit cigar. Now, as “Rolling Stone” notes, Kelly says: “‘Trapped in the Closet’ is pretty much forever.”

According to Kelly, there are currently 85 chapters to the “silly idea” saga in total. “I don’t have a job, so I sit in the studio all the time and think of stupid stuff to do,” said Kelly, providing hope to unemployed cultural phenoms everywhere.

Reserving overall judgment, I must concede some of the plot lines sound, frankly, inspirational, as does Kelly’s assessment of the endeavor.

“It’s not hard somehow,” said Kelly. “When you commit to something and have fun with it, it appreciates you, the gift, and it starts to help you out.”

As Steven J. Horowitz of “Rolling Stone” put it: “[R. Kelly]’s laughing all the way to Broadway.”

—Alissa Fleck 

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Clearly no one was in a rockin’ mood this weekend. “Rock of Ages,” the musical adaptation starring Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Catherine Zeta-Jones, earned just $15 million over its opening weekend, the Huffington Post reports. It ranked behind “Prometheus” and even “Madagascar 3,” proving a star-studded cast can lose out to aliens and cuddly, animated lions no matter how sexy Cruise’s locks.

“Rock of Ages” is the story of a small town girl and city boy who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams, says the movie’s official writeup. This is Cruise’s worst wide release opening since “Lions for Lambs” in 2007, the Post also reports.

—Alissa Fleck