Take Flight, Menier Chocolate Factory, London

Richard Maltby Jr and David Shire's musical is about the early days of flying, an odd premise. Musicals have had all sorts of settings and inspirations, but My Fair Lady isn't "about" linguistics or Kiss Me, Kate "about" Shakespeare. Instead of passion and personality, the team and their book writer, John Weidman, put an abstract noun and associated clunky metaphors at the empty heart of their work.

Shuffling (or waffling) between three stories of air pioneers, Take Flight shows us the events leading up to Charles Lindbergh's solo trip to Paris in 1927 and Amelia Earhart's attempt to fly around the world 10 years later. We also see Wilbur and Orville Wright repeatedly trying, in the first four years of the century, to conquer gravity, a struggle that, to say the least, is lacking in suspense.

These laconic, prim figures, a kind of Laurel and Laurel, may be intended as comic relief, but an actor forced to ask: "How can we be wrong? We're the Wright brothers!" provokes only silent sympathy.

Lindbergh takes to the skies because, like his fellow Swede, Greta Garbo, he wants to be alone. Earhart is also remote and shallow, advising us to "believe in your dreams" and explaining, with tea-towel wisdom, that, if you love something, you should let it go.

After Earhart dies, the musical wafts her back in time to urge Lindbergh on to glory, bizarrely recasting this accomplished feminist as a strong man's muse.

Rather than evoking the period, Shire's music blasts us with anachronistic, pushy self-assertion. Maltby ends countless vocal lines with an emphatic "die", often in comic contexts; the idea may have been to remind us of the ever-present danger, but the result is tasteless.

In Sam Buntrock's hard-working cast, Ian Bartholomew stands out for his touching portrayal of Earhart's unhappy husband, as does Elliot Levey for his droll, stone-faced Orville. Sally Ann Triplett incongruously turns Earhart into a tough tootsie.

With two leads who share the stage only when one of them is dead, Take Flight is blatantly lacking an important theatrical element, the one for which flying is a well-known symbol. Lindbergh may exclaim: "Oh, God! Ahahahaha!" when he's up in the air, but he's not keen on sharing his cockpit. Writers who put on musicals about the joy of being alone shouldn't be surprised if audiences take them at their word.

In rep to 22 September (020-7907 7060; www.menierchocolatefactory.com)