The movie shellacked a thick layer of highbrow cinema gloss over fundamentally pulpy material, and was awarded with a pile of Oscars. I found it to be more grueling than enjoyable — although by the standards of today’s torture-porn thrillers it’s positively G rated — and was looking forward to seeing its grim self-seriousness punctured onstage. But “Silence! The Musical” rests a little too smugly on the sheer absurdity of its conceit, which is itself a little shopworn at this point. (Even the title inspires a yawn: the truncate-and-add-exclamation-point gag is pretty stale, guys.)

There are some deliriously tasty (sorry) bits sprinkled throughout — did I mention those adorable little lambs, gamboling onstage during most of the musical numbers to offer choral support? — but overall “Silence!” feels like a by-the-numbers gag musical that doesn’t just fail to break any new ground but also covers its familiar territory with only sporadic flashes of ingenuity. It will be most enjoyable to rabid fans of the movie version, who can feast on the manner in which the Kaplans have set to song all the ickiest morsels of dialogue.

Ms. Harris certainly does a sporting job of sending up Jodie Foster’s intense performance as Clarice. Her imitation of Ms. Foster’s slight lisp and hickory-smoked voice is spot on, and particularly funny when applied to scenes like Clarice’s early interview with a superior who notes approvingly that she majored in “criminal psychology and dance.” Clarice’s solemn response: “Tap, ballet and jazz, shir.” Sporting an intentionally sloppy mud-brown wig, Ms. Harris never lets her solemn mask of anguished dedication slip, even when she’s vamping through one of Mr. Gattelli’s somewhat pro-forma mock-Bob Fosse numbers.

Mr. Barrett, a handsome Broadway leading man seen in the revivals of “Chicago” and “Annie Get Your Gun,” is clearly having a grand time playing one of the most charismatically repellent villains in recent moviedom. The songs are mostly just outlandishly coarse examples of standard Broadway pastiche, but Mr. Barrett’s gleaming vocalizing adds a layer of helpful polish that makes them more palatable.