For 47 years, St. Paul’s History Theatre has been bringing stories from the past – particularly Minnesota’s past – to engaging life on its stage, not least by being a marvelous incubator for writing talent.

It has produced 147 new plays, and that requires a lot of reading, revising, workshopping and polishing before a script is ready to receive a full-scale production. I always imagined that longtime artistic director Ron Peluso, who retired in 2022, had to be a tough taskmaster to make sure these new shows were stage-ready.

Which leads me to wonder what went wrong in the creation of “Don’t Miss Doris Hines,” the company’s very disappointing season-opening production. I won’t do the forensics on how this clearly unfinished script found its way to the company’s stage, but the upshot is that – somewhere along the line – someone had to question whether there was really a story to tell here, and, if so, how to tell it effectively.

My understanding is that playwright Tylie Shider originally set out to write a play about Sounds of Blackness, the three-time-Grammy-winning vocal group founded at Macalester College in 1969. Longtime leader Gary Hines evidently cited the influence of his mother, Minneapolis-based jazz singer Doris Hines, and Shider decided to write a play about her instead.

If Doris Hines led an interesting life, you wouldn’t know it from History Theatre’s production. We’re presented with a woman with a growing family whose singing aspirations are repeatedly criticized by her non-supportive husband. Over time, the persistent auditioner eventually lands steady work, first in her hometown of New York City, then after moving to Minneapolis, where she’s forced to deal with housing discrimination.

And, to hear Shider’s script tell it, that’s about it. There’s no particular arc to “Don’t Miss Doris Hines,” just a series of events that follow a fairly well-worn path for nightclub singers, the momentum of their careers surging and ebbing as regular work comes and goes.

It would likely have been more enjoyable if this play about a musician had more music in it. Despite the presence of an onstage pianist, most of what we hear is recorded and the actor portraying Hines, Comfort Dolo, is rarely allowed more than one verse of a song before we’re plunged back into another kitchen table argument with her husband.

The paucity of song is but one example of solid talent short-circuited by an ill-structured script. Darius Dotch has been invariably impressive on area stages over the past several years, but he’s handicapped by Shider making Hines’ husband a one-note nag. Similarly, the very talented Neal Beckman does about all he can with Hines’ agent, who merely performs an agent’s duties, i.e. booking work for his client.

Really, there’s only one character onstage who commands an audience’s attention, and that’s Hines’ gum-smacking sister-in-law, who turns from antagonist to supporter. Shider clearly wrote her to bring some comic spark to the show, but Ashawnti Sakina Ford delivers her lines in such a rapid, shrill monotone that I only caught about a third of what she said.

During the curtain call, we finally get to see and hear the real Doris Hines in vintage video projected behind the bowing actors, making immediately clear what a charismatic performer she was. Call that one more crucial element missing from “Don’t Miss Doris Hines.”

‘Don’t Miss Doris Hines’

When: Through Oct. 12

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul

Tickets: $70-$15, available at 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com.

Capsule: Eminently missable.

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