NEW YORK — The brand new Broadway musical “Water for Elephants” seems to be patched collectively. In a great way.In any case, the Benzini Brothers’ Despair-era touring circus, the place the present is ready, is not any tiptop large prime. The animals are malnourished, and a few may be a little bit mangy. The performers kind a tightknit expert ensemble, however a number of carry a variety of miles and appear a little bit weary. Each the tent and the touring quarters are on the ragtag aspect. It’s solely becoming, then, that the puppets representing the menagerie seem stitched from well-worn items, the corporate is product of disparate however complementary transferring elements, and easy scaffolds deliver to life an surroundings removed from Ringling razzmatazz.Not all the pieces works in Jessica Stone’s manufacturing — there’s a purpose the phrases “dream sequence” are inclined to set off alarm bells — however no less than it summons a coherent theatrical universe. And most of the time, the present (whose world premiere was this previous June in Atlanta) captures the unabashed mixture of romance and pathos that made its supply materials, a bestseller by Sara Gruen, so wildly standard.Just like the novel, Rick Elice’s e-book toggles between the current of the aged Jacob Jankowski (Gregg Edelman) and 1931, the fateful 12 months he joined the circus. Having dropped out of veterinary faculty simply earlier than his remaining exams, the younger Jacob (an interesting Grant Gustin, who performed the title character on the CW sequence “The Flash”) finds a job, and a refuge from a life in flux, with the Benzini Brothers.The outfit’s proprietor and ringmaster, August (Paul Alexander Nolan), is a modern charmer, however the character was performed by Christoph Waltz within the film adaptation from 2011, so he has a darkish aspect. To drive the purpose residence, each time August opens his mouth to sing, the rating, by the seven-men group PigPen Theatre Co., immediately seems like sub-Kander and Ebb, these masters of ominous appeal.On the receiving finish of August’s brutality are, nicely, all people and all the pieces on the circus, however primarily his spouse, Marlena (a silver-voiced Isabelle McCalla, confirming the promise she confirmed in “The Promenade”), and the crowd-drawing elephant, Rosie.Like all of the musical’s beasties, Rosie is a puppet, and the manufacturing’s use of that creative gadget is deftly built-in. This does imply that “Water for Elephants” will draw comparisons to “The Lion King” and even the undervalued “Lifetime of Pi,” however the brand new present makes use of puppets a little bit in a different way. As a result of the circus is each a setting and a storytelling software right here, the border between spectacle and life is porous, and it makes narrative sense for people and animals to mesh into each other. Probably the most hanging instance is the horse Silver Star, delivered to life by the acrobat Antoine Boissereau. The scene during which Boissereau performs an aerial quantity whereas Marlena sings the aching ballad “Simple,” cradling a puppet horse’s head, would possibly as nicely be sponsored by Kleenex.Equally, acrobatics fill the Benzini acts, however the solid’s precision and physicality additionally buoy seemingly mundane duties such because the hammering of stakes to tug up the tent: This can be a lifetime of ever-present danger, necessitating ever-present athleticism. These components are fluidly woven into the present by Shana Carroll, a founder and creative director of the Montreal collective the 7 Fingers who’s credited with circus design, and choreographed with Jesse Robb. (Carroll’s 7 Fingers colleague Gypsy Snider labored on Diane Paulus’s circus-inflected revival of “Pippin” a decade in the past.)Sharp. Witty. Considerate. Join the Type Memo publication.It’s telling that it has taken me so lengthy to circle again to the music, as a result of it isn’t what makes the strongest impression. At their finest, the numbers sound just like the Nineteen Thirties filtered by the folks rock of the late Sixties and early ’70s: “Wild,” a duet between Jacob and Marlena, emulates early Joni Mitchell romanticism, whereas a number of songs’ melodic melancholia and interval ambiance recall Randy Newman’s explorations of Americana. The lyrics by no means come remotely near Newman’s sharp angles, although, and too typically succumb to boring earnestness. If solely the rating had been prepared to be as untethered from gravity as the remainder of the present.Water for Elephants, ongoing on the Imperial Theatre in New York. 2 hours, 40 minutes. waterforelephantsthemusical.com.