Not so very long ago, Roundabout Theatre Company suffered from a recurrent case of Celebrity Fornication Disorder, a wasting condition that leads theatrical producers to cast famous or semifamous people in leading roles to which they are manifestly unsuited. So pervasive was the CFD problem that, at one point, I even characterized it as “the Roundabout Way.” In recent years, the company seemed to have kicked the habit; but now comes sad evidence of recidivism in the form of the avian fiasco Bye Bye Birdie.

We must admit, we had fun unleashing wordplay on the bird play in our review today, which turned out to be just one missile among a volley of critical arrows that greeted the show. Robert Longbottom’s sorry direction did the production no favors. But the central problem of the show—its casting—bespeaks a new outbreak of CFD at the Roundabout. How else to explain the presence of John Stamos, Gina Gershon and Bill Irwin above the title of this dodo of a revival? This is a musical, after all, and none of them, for starters, can sing.

A New York Times article last week explained some of the logic. “According to Todd Haimes, the artistic director of the Roundabout, the Van Dyke–Rivera strategy—casting a couple of talented no-names and crossing your fingers—is really a second choice these days. ‘Your first choice,’ he said, ‘is to get a star who’s also great.’” But the no-name option was clearly not the second choice in this case; rather, the Roundabout went with names who couldn’t deliver the goods, much less the great. “What most recommended Mr. Stamos and Ms. Gershon, Mr. Haimes said, is that ‘they’re both friends of ours,’” according to the Times. But friends do not let friends look so bad in public.

Hindsight is easy, of course, but in this case foresight would have been too. John Stamos is a handsome sitcom actor with a poor track record in musical theater: He has previously closed successful Broadway productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Nine. In those cases, as here, he has been called upon to project great charm and intelligence, and has fallen short. Gina Gershon, for her part, is a luscious-looking woman who has earned our affection for her roles in such films as Showgirls and Bound, but she is neither a singer nor a dancer nor convincing as a lovelorn secretary. In neither of these cases can the final failure of the performance be called a surprise.

What is especially galling about this miscasting is that, whatever their merits might be in other roles, neither Stamos nor Gershon is really a star of the first order. It is one thing to miscast, say, Julia Roberts in return for a guaranteed box-office bonanza. But how many tickets do the names John Stamos and Gina Gershon actually sell? Surely fewer than would be sold by good word-of-mouth about a production that works. For the lesson of the past few years is that star names, in most cases, do not matter where musicals are concerned. Without exception, the biggest hits of today’s Broadway—Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia!, Wicked, The Lion King, South Pacific, Hair, West Side Story, Billy Elliott, The Phantom of the Opera—have no names above the title at all. So why cast inferior semicelebs at the cost of potential excellence? The Roundabout is trading its artistic credibility for nothing.

Producers, heed the sad dying call of Bye Bye Birdie: When you play at starfucking, you often get fucked by your stars.