Despite its lyrical density, "Working," at Manoa Valley Theatre, plays just like what it is — a musical revue assembled by committee.

Based on Studs Terkel's book of interviews with American workers, the show features music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, James Taylor, Micki Grant, Craig Carnelia, Mary Rodgers, Susan Birkenhead, Matt Landers and Graciela Daniele.

It has no plot but takes its continuity from the average workday. From Monday morning blues to the interminable last 30 minutes on the clock, its mostly wage-rate anti-heroes juxtapose their hopes and dreams against the reality of tired minds and muscles.

All the livelong day

Everybody done know that song

Working for a living the whole day long

One supposes that the show's eight creators wrote to order — trading off the bricklayer number for the waitress solo and dropping in an occasional monologue.

The current production, directed and choreographed by Brad Powell, is workmanlike but lacks life and immediacy. Powell makes some interesting choices by adding a pair of dancing muses to the bricklayer number and upstaging the singing truckers with choreographed headlights. The singers and dancers hit their notes and their marks but fail to animate the material.

For the most part, the show looks like prettified clockwork.

Collectively, the performance needs to dig deeper into the original emotion behind the material. The MVT version has lost its edge somewhere in the layers of filtering through interviewer, committee and performer.

That rawness is still there in the lyrics, where each song focuses on a character and an emotional tone.

Personal standards have fallen:

Kids don't know how to behave anymore!

Ask them to rise and they ask you: "What for?"

We confiscate weapons and drugs at the door

Powerlessness is pervasive:

I could've been somethin'

If my destiny

Had been left to me

But there is pride in survi-val:

Day after day after day after day

That's where I put myself on the line

That's where I sweat to earn my pay

And determination for the future:

I worked my whole damn life,

So's I could make a better life than my dad could give me,

And give it to my kid.

At MVT, "Working" is a glossy and mechanical reproduction that misses that spirit.