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The rest of the audience seemed to enjoy Tuesday night’s performance of “Gypsy” at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts. I didn’t. Lump me in with the small group of people who don’t think “Gypsy” is one of the great American musicals, and move on.

Perhaps it was just me, but I found the show disjointed, rambling and, except for the torch songs, I thought the music was pretty bad. Kudos to the traveling cast for putting a big grin on their faces and going out there night after night and singing that stuff. I couldn’t do it.

It all comes down to one thing: Musical theater is supposed to transport you to a world you’ve never been — all through the power of song. The Stephen Sondheim lyrics — yes, that Sondheim — lyrics just don’t do it for me.

I don’t like constant exposition in my musicals, and “Gypsy” is packed with it. At times, I wondered if I were watching a musical disguised as a comedy or a comedy pretending to be a musical.

There’s a great subtext — about mothers who try to live their dreams through their children — but large chunks of it disappear down the black hole of people talking. OK. Nobody goes to a musical to listen to the dialogue. Even if it is funny enough to draw guffaws from the audience. Somebody needs to open their mouth and start singing here!

My issue with the tunes are the songs are simply reinforcements of recent dialogue, not a way to move the story forward. Wash, rinse, add a cow, repeat. Couple this with a cast that can definitely sing but doesn’t emote and there’s a problem. I felt like the cast was more concerned with hitting their marks and singing out than thinking about how their words and actions were affecting the audience.

Maybe it’s the weather.

For most of the show, which tells the story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s rise from bit player to main attraction, there was zero emotional energy on the stage. Even during the highly choreographed numbers, such as “Mr. Goldstone, I Love You” and “Dainty June and her Farmboys,” the movement seemed forced, as if the cast was just going through the motions. The show just seemed flat.

Still, Kathy Halenda has great vocal chops. She certainly sang the hell out of Mama Rose’s numbers, including “Some People” and the iconic “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” but I think, in this case, she fell flat as a dramatic actress. Blame it on the speakers, blame it on the direction, blame it on the actress, but all her spoken dialogue came out at a high-volume stage mother screech. If that’s the effect the director was going for, fine. I’m just saying that you might want to dial it back on the loud and let the performance speak for itself.

Ruby Lewis, who played the teenage June, is a decent comic actress trapped inside an eye-rollingly awful baby-doll dress costume. I’d have preferred it if she let a little more genuine emotion leak through into her role and not stick to the saccharine sweet exterior of her character. The duet with the teenage Louise, “If Momma was Married,” begged for more emotion and just didn’t find it.

Oddly enough, the show’s best moment came in the second number of Act II, with “Together, Wherever We Go.” Halenda, Nicholas Hamel (the show’s adequate but uninspired Herbie) and Missy Dowse as Louise really clicked for that one song. It was everything musical theater was supposed to be — a perfect union of tune and toe-tapping, energetic fun that quickly moved the story along from point A to point B. Without 10 pounds of exposition. Out of 17 musical numbers, it’s really the only one that nailed it.

Dowse does deserve props as the show’s caterpillar-to-butterfly character, the titular Gypsy Rose Lee. She’s got a lovely, if somewhat soft, voice that I wish had been put to better use during the “Let Me Entertain You” montage. The choreography and staging there were interesting — a flashback to the burlesque days of old and a real treat to see at the Philharmonic.

Finally, I’d like to mention that the three actresses who played the burlesque beauties Mazeppa, Electra and Tessie Tura deserve a hand or three for the “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” number. These showy roles demand an outsize personality — and all three were right on the money. Plus, any actress who can bend over and play a trumpet between her legs — as Rachel Abrams did in the role of Mazeppa — deserves a shout out. It brought the house down.

More trumpets, please.