A dancin’ Dylan with two left feet

SAN DIEGO —  Bob Dylan is probably not the first composer who comes to mind when you think of musical theater. In fact, he may be the last. Yet the songwriter who once epitomized ‘60s counterculture seems bound for Broadway. Problem is, while his music may be seducing a mainstream audience that once anxiously resisted it, the jukebox bandwagon it’s traveling on hasn’t yet figured out what theatrical direction to head in.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the oddly misconceived Twyla Tharp dance-concert staging of his songs that opened Thursday at San Diego’s Old Globe, tries to do for Dylan what “Movin’ Out” did for Billy Joel. In short, create an event that will lure baby boomers to plunk down a lot of money to rock in their seats while deliriously graceful dancers interpret beloved old tunes.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this proposition, especially when the choreographer-director is as abundantly resourceful as Tharp, whom you can always count on for breathtakingly precise artistry. And Dylan, who now licenses music to Starbucks, isn’t exactly above the commercial fray these days, if he ever was.

Still, songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Desolation Row” occupy a different cultural place than “Just the Way You Are” and “Uptown Girl.” And no matter how well wrought the execution, the kitschy aesthetic of that newly popular hybrid form, the “dance-ical,” seems a better fit for Joel than for Dylan, one of the few contemporary singer-songwriters to earn a place in “The Norton Anthology of Poetry.”

This is a job, in other words, for Tharp’s more abstract choreographic imagination, not the crowd-pleasing literalism that works fine when you’re dealing with songs such as “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” which furnishes its own libretto.

Tharp strikes an unsatisfying compromise, setting Dylan’s songs in the context of a bogged-down traveling circus that’s roiling with all kinds of surreal plotlines. Various dramatic threads include a struggle between Capt. Arab (Thom Sesma), the tyrannical, gimp-legged manager of the circus, and Coyote (Michael Arden), his open-hearted son who’s quickly coming of age; the erotic lure of Cleo (Jenn Colella), the enticing, country-voiced lion tamer who ensnares both men; and the political upheaval within the rest of the troupe, which seems bent on fomenting its own Age of Aquarius revolution.

Storytelling has never been Tharp’s strength, though she can’t resist giving it a dancer’s mute try. Here she strives to establish a definite locale that’s also a blurry dreamscape. The program designates the setting as “sometime between awake and sleep,” which is one way of handling a choice you’re not sure you want to be stuck with.

More often than not, the circus imagery feels like an encumbrance, a distraction from the radical subjectivity of Dylan’s lyrics, which employ metaphors (like the carnival) to anchor a private journey whose very elusiveness is what makes it so haunting. It’s their indefinite nature, combined with the singer’s gruff, searching tone, that spurs our own deep brooding. To seize on one fleeting theme and make it not only overly concrete but pervasive is to narrow the space for our own musing.

All of this wouldn’t be such a problem if the choreography created a kinetic universe of its own. Not everyone was impressed with “Movin’ Out’s” narrative shuffle through the decades, but there was consensus that the balletic grace of the piece was unsurpassed among contemporary musicals. “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” features a very different dance vocabulary, one that takes its inspiration more from clowns, rodeo men and freak-show attractions than from George Balanchine.

The movement Tharp conjures with ropes, lassos, beach balls, hula-hoops and trampolines is mesmerizing in its acrobatic fluidity but somehow seems incidental to the songs. Often what emerges from the colorful swirl is a performer, standing stock-still, belting out one of Dylan’s classics with about as much physical energy as your average karaoke superstar.

The male leads, Sesma and Arden, offer strong cover versions of Dylan hits. Though neither possesses that inimitable craggy bluesiness, both tap into the rumbling subterranean intensity of the music.

Sesma rouses the audience into spontaneous clapping with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “Forever Young,” managing to convey in both a keen Dylan-esque sense of life passing. And though Arden occasionally inflects his numbers with Justin Timberlake-like pleading, he has a likable boyishness that works well with such romantic ballads as “Lay, Lady, Lay.”

Seeing the two men circle each other onstage is like watching young and old versions of Dylan grapple for dominance. If only the rest of the production had such resonance. Colella has a vibrant country voice, though she makes a bland impression as the woman Capt. Arab and Coyote are violently vying for. Yet it’s Tharp who’s responsible for this blandness. After all, it’s her direction that has Colella sing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” to a dopily devoted dog (hypnotically danced by Jason McDoyle). The staging turns a brutally unsentimental breakup song into a Hallmark moment.

This isn’t the only time when the sentiment grows sappy. The duet between Arden and Colella of “I Believe in You” could lead one to believe that Dylan is the force behind Celine Dion. The voices are great, but the attitude’s all wrong.

And then there are the circus politics that every now and again make a dutiful return, like your mother reminding you to eat your vegetables. It’s easy to imagine Dylan responding favorably to this perfunctory handling of his music’s storied militancy. By placing the action in a fictitious realm, he doesn’t have to carry the burden of being a spokesman for the protest generation, something he has typically resisted. But the historical dimension is lost in Tharp’s sketchy treatment. Suffice it to say that a clown-filled “Masters of War” makes about as much sense as a “Hee-Haw”-style “Maggie’s Farm” rebellion number.

It’s no surprise given Tharp’s meticulous visual command that the production design is superb across the board. Santo Loquasto’s sets vanish and reappear with the alacrity you’d expect from a fugitive circus. And kudos to Donald Holder’s poetic lighting and Michael Dansicker’s orchestrations, which had audience members swaying joyfully in their seats, thanks to the five-piece band conducted by keyboardist Henry Aronson.

Tharp is a tireless reviser of her own work. Her productions famously keep improving, even after they’ve been lauded on Broadway. But how her latest will overcome a half-baked conception is unclear.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’” works only as a simple-minded entertainment. The rich blend of feelings stirred by Dylan’s music is numbingly homogenized by Tharp’s distracting illustrations. While no framework could possibly be as satisfying as one’s own private communion with the music, there’s no reason it should prove so limiting. Dylan is nothing if not a thinking person’s songwriter, yet Tharp’s approach compels us to empty our minds. The times indeed are a-changing, but maybe for the worse.

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‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ ’

Where: The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Ends: March 19

Price: $47 to $80

Contact: (619) 234-5623

Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Michael Arden...Coyote

Thom Sesma...Capt. Arab

Jenn Colella...Cleo

Conceived, directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. Music and lyrics by Bob Dylan. Sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto. Lighting by Don Holder. Sound by Francois Bergeron. Musical direction by Henry Aronson. Musical coordinator William Meade. Music adapted, arranged, orchestrated by Michael Dansicker. Production stage manager Arthur Gaffin.