Carol Burnett is a woman of many talents, not least of which is her ability to savage pop culture, as in her parodies of Scarlett O'Hara and Norma Desmond.

That ability serves her less well with the play Hollywood Arms, which she wrote with daughter Carrie Hamilton.

Now onstage at the Arvada Center, its autobiographical melodrama is a pastiche of many familiar stories, including Daddy Long Legs, Gypsy and every Hallmark movie you've ever seen.

Despite some fine performances, the play relies on telegraphed emotions and period charm rather than surprise or meaning.

The heart of this play is not Burnett, portrayed as a girl named Helen, but her mother, Louise.

When the play opens, Louise has left her daughter, Helen, back in Texas while she tries to make it as a celebrity writer in Hollywood.

She's attractive and driven, if not the most attentive mama, but as the play progresses, Helen becomes frustrated and angry, sinking into an alcoholic morass.

Sharon Kay White is interesting to watch at every stage, moving from effervescence to ugly cursedness.

The primary relationship of the play isn't, in fact, between Louise and her ex-husband, Jody (a tubercular alcoholic played with a gentle nature by Jude Moran), or her dull but stable suitor, Bill (James Nantz, stuck in the Herbie role from Gypsy), but with her own mother.

Anne Oberbrockling creates the most intriguing character, Nanny, who battles frequently with her daughter but is the lone anchor in her grandchildren's lives.

She's easily annoyed, frequently funny and falls neither into the category of feisty old lady nor salt of the earth.

Helen, the character based on Burnett, has none of that uniqueness.

Played as a child by Chloe Nosan, she's an angel child, given to overly precious exclamations like, "I don't know what I'd do without you! Please don't ever die!"

Michelle Merz-Hutchinson plays her as a teen, an aspiring actress and gifted mimic (Merz-Hutchinson is playful and versatile in an overly long comic scene and soulful in its musical conclusion) but one seemingly without flaws.

The final component of this very female family comes from Helen's sister Alice, played with a refreshing naturalism by Claire Carson.

There's just far too much cuteness and predictability in this vision of 1940s California. When Jody is introduced in the first scene as newly sober, do you think he might fall off the wagon?

Did we really gain anything from having young Helen taught cutesy names for genitalia?

And when Helen cries out, "It's not your choice, Mama! It's mine!" it's long after we've passed the catharsis-of-no-return.

Brian Mallgrave has designed a beautiful set, a stucco residential motel under the Hollywood sign.

Unfortunately, the play, like the set, is a false front.

Hollywood Arms

* Grade: C+

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 1 p.m. Wednesdays, through Nov. 23, Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.

* Cost: $30 to $40

* Information: 720-898-7200

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