Robert Carsen’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Broadway operetta” arrives at English National Opera in a whoosh of promising endorsements. It was a succès de scandale when it was first seen in Paris in 2006, and then “almost banned” from La Scala, Milan – allegedly (and improbably) because Italians objected to seeing Silvio Berlusconi lampooned in underpants.

Well, now it’s at the Coli. And what a load of camp old cobblers it turns out to be. I have no objection to people tampering with Lillian Hellman’s stodgy and preachy original adaptation of Voltaire. Even during preparations for the show’s 1956 premiere it was rewritten more times than Elizabeth Taylor’s marriage certificate.

But Carsen’s sardonic but overstrained take on the tale – which clonkingly turns the Westphalia of Voltaire’s novel into a country called West Failure (for which read Eisenhower’s 1950s America) and then meanders unconvincingly into a waffly 21st-century ecological skit – is a horrible mixture of scattergun and sledgehammer: too many targets, too many “topical” poor-taste one-liners, far too little subtlety.

And too few laughs. After a lively beginning, when we are whizzed through a 1950s TV-set proscenium arch into a White House replete with promiscuous intern (Mairéad Buicke’s feisty Paquette), Jackie Kennedy-like First Lady and a smartypants Rumsfeld-like Doctor Pangloss (the brilliant Alex Jennings, who is also Voltaire, a cynical dustman, and the night’s chief redeeming feature), one skit after another falls flat.

They include an all-singing, all-dancing court of Ku Klux Klansmen and witch-hunting senators in the auto-da-fé scene (Bernstein and Hellman were indeed satirising the McCarthy witch hunts, but were witty enough not to spell it out); an Ellis Island immigration skit that seems to go on for ever; and the now-famous scene where the five “deposed kings” (Blair, Chirac, Putin, Berlusconi and Bush) float on sunbeds in a deeply satirical river of oil. At one point we even get a snatch of dialogue from Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, complete with the appearance of transvestite musicians. I know not why.

What real entertainment there is comes from where it always did: the snappy original lyrics of Richard Wilbur and Stephen Sondheim, and Bernstein’s delicious pastiche-rich music, which pays homage to everything from Offenbach to tango.

Even here, however, standards are not what they might be in the best of all possible worlds. The overture – surely the 20th century’s finest – is turned into a horrible blitz of percussion. After that, as if to make amends, the orchestra and conductor Rumon Gamba virtually disappear from the mix – thanks to singers who are grossly overmiked at times.

The personable Toby Spence seizes his chance to make something other than a gormless cypher out of Candide – but his easy-come-easy-go American accent is a mistake: it turns a pleasant tenor into a splatter of mangled vowels. Anna Christy’s Cunégonde, a pertly calculating faux-dumb blonde decked out like Monroe, is a delight to watch. But she fudges far too many notes for comfort in that coloratura showpiece, Glitter and Be Gay. Fine for Broadway, perhaps; but it shouldn’t pass muster in an opera house.

Beverley Klein, however, is feistiness personified recounting her woes as the Old Lady with One Buttock. The costumes (Buki Shiff) are sleek, stylish and look expensive. And Rob Ashford’s dance routines fill the stage with plenty of flashing legs and spinning torsos. After three hours of leaden-footed send-ups, you relish such simple pleasures.

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