There is great temptation to make fun of KHON-2 news anchor Joe Moore's cliche-ridden "Unlikely Lawman," now on stage at Chaminade University's Mamiya Theatre.

Certainly a play that opens with a solo harmonica version of "Camptown Races" and drunken cowboys yee-hawing in a Western saloon can't hope to be taken seriously. And especially not when it uses both "cow punchers" and "mangy" in its first line of dialogue.

But Manoa Valley Theatre and director William Ogilvie want us to take this Western at face value, so — getting in one last "Doo-dah! Doo-dah!" — we will. Besides, the show lacks a schoolmarm, and nobody once says "varmint," so it can't be all that derivative, can it?

Yes, it can.

Moore's script is an adaptation of Robert Broomall's 1993 Western novel "The Lawmen," and draws heavily on television and movie versions of the Old West. Like "High Noon" of the 1950s, it heads for a lonesome shootout when the town fathers won't back up their sheriff. Like "Gunsmoke," which spanned the 1950s to 1970s, it features a solid, humorless peacekeeper and his nontraditional girlfriend. And like the 1970s spoof "Blazing Saddles," it includes a corrupt town boss and a black deputy.

There's a brief spark of interest in the disarming byplay between the self-righteous white sheriff and his disrespectful black sidekick, but it fades quickly into predictable moralizing over racial sensitivity.

The strongest point in the production is that the director and cast steadfastly plow through the script — much like the character who shrugs, "I always knew I was gonna die sometime," just before he trudges off to the big showdown.

The dedicated, stubborn tone of the performance is keyed by Moore, who, as usual, takes the lead role in his own script. There's a great deal of James Arness and John Wayne in Moore's performance as Clay Chandler, the loner with a tragic past who agrees to clean up the town of Topaz, Ariz.

A man of few words, Chandler lets his fists and his guns do his talking. This works out well, since the character doesn't have much to say.At least his punches and pistol shots break up the tedium of a small town hanging on over a played-out mine.

Derrick Brown brings some hints of real life to his role of freed slave turned deputy sheriff, but the part sometimes feels like it was dropped into the play to add punch and not organically part of the whole.

Katie Doyle is the dancehall girl and prostitute, and Alan Cole is the loutish brother of the town's strongman. A large cast of extras often fills the stage, but Johanna Morriss' set design forces most of the action upstage and lighting by Lloyd S. Riford III gives it a kerosene-lantern murkiness. We also tire quickly of the harmonica interludes.

"Unlikely Lawman" hits most of the elements that composed the genre of the American Western, but fails to add new interest or open up new territory.