‘Dottie !’: Parker’s Rolling in Her Grave

That most deft and venomous of theater critics, Dorothy Parker, would have to come back from the grave to find exactly the right excoriating phrases to describe “Dottie!,” a spectacularly bad musical at the Fountain Theatre based on Parker’s life.

Director Jay Alan Quantrill also wrote the book, music and lyrics for this slumbering behemoth, which clocks in at three hours plus, and makes you keenly empathize with what those sloths must have felt, wallowing in the tar-pits.

The performers struggle valiantly to surmount their dismal material, but all, with the exception of Susan Savage’s hooty Tallulah Bankhead, fail. Perky Caryn Richman, singularly miscast as Parker, would be more at home playing Debbie Reynolds than a famously vitriolic wit.

Jeanne Reith Waterman’s sumptuous costumes and Robert W. Zentis’ versatile sets and lighting are high points in this theatrical nadir. Quantrill’s lyrics seem to have been directly lifted from a remedial rhyming dictionary, and his music is fortunately forgettable. In fact, the only memorable thing you will take with you as you exit--make that flee--the theater is your own painfully fossilized rear-end.

* “Dottie!,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave . , Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 16. $18-$20. (213) 663-1525. Running time: 3 hours, 5 minutes.