For aspiring playwrights, the equivalent of Penis Envy is Stoppard Envy. How else to explain the plethora of literary/historical/intellectual fantasias on our stages? In Daughters Of Genius, the literature is John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the history includes the Great Fire of London (1666). The intellectual issues, alas, remain vague.

Author Evan Smith sounds like he really knows his John Milton; also his Milton Berle. Daughters is a bizarre collage of monumental questions (the nature of eternity, etc.) and shticky comedy. I doubt Stoppard himself could bring this off, but in Smith's hands there's less creation than chaos (not the biblical kind; just your garden-variety mess).

Here's the setup. In 1666, John Milton is blind, but still full of creative vigor. He bullies his three daughters—Anne, Mary and Deborah—into serving as human Dictaphones. Unsurprisingly, they rebel. Mary is a slut. Worse, the homely Anne (of The Single Eyebrow) launches a program of self-education, leading her to question just about every aspect of the universe. (I can't figure out Deborah.) Outside, the Great Fire rages, though nobody breaks a sweat.

There's more, including a fey devil in a unitard, who tempts Anne—also a flying angel, who presides magisterially over all. (Some Kushner Envy is at work here, too.) Finally, Smith inserts an Alistair Cook-like narrator, who offers annoying marginal notes. I found him utterly tiresome—this despite being well-played by The Actor Formerly Known As Lenny Haas (here, he's billed as Leonard C. Haas, presumably for Milton-worthy gravitas).

Daughters reaches for profundity as well as comedy, and falls short at both. Too many jokes involve juxtaposing Miltonian language and ideas with contemporary diction—it's clever the first time, but not the sixth or tenth. Worse, the characters here—including Milton and all three daughters—are sketched with little depth.

Director Jen Childs has a sense of style and an able ensemble of actors, but she can't overcome the script's weaknesses. Moreover, the show calls for considerable flying by the Angel. It's meant to look spectacular, but in the small space of St. Stephen's Theatre, we're struck by its awkwardness—slow trolleys, elaborate harnesses and hooks. In other words, we can see all the clumsy machinery, which sadly is a pretty good metaphor for Daughters as a whole.

DAUGHTERS OF GENIUS

Through June 18, 1812 Productions at St. Stephen's Theatre, 10th and Ludlow sts., 215-592-9560