Valhalla is also the stuff of myth, but it’s not so splendid as Wagner’s palace of the gods. Paul Rudnick’s over-the-top comedy, which is in its area premiere by Zeitgeist Stage Company (at the BCA Black Box through May 5), is as big a mess as the plot of the Ring Cycle — which at least has only one plot. Rudnick weaves together a couple of tales in an attempt to say something about humanity’s pursuit of beauty — something on which you might think gay humanity had a lock. At one end of the narrow playing space lurks the classical splendor in which the adolescent Ludwig II of Bavaria — later the “mad” builder of storybook castles, including the opera-inspired Neuschwanstein — comes of uncomfortable age, his beauty-loving head in a cloud of Wagnerian opera. At the other end is the porch of a drab Texas dwelling where, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, bisexual charmer James Avery wages his own fight against ugliness, whether exemplified by brown wallpaper or the restrictions of the Bible Belt. For most of its two-hours-plus length, the comedy plays ping-pong among the two stories, finally melding them in a mad frenzy when, during World War II, James and his childhood friend/lover Henry Lee Stafford parachute into Bavaria and discover Ludwig’s wedding cake of a castle for themselves. Eventually Henry Lee finds his way to the Valhalla of Norse mythology as James finds his way home, guardian of more than one heart.

Valhalla is a demanding sprawl of silliness — though not without its share of one-liners. Under co-director (with Rick Park) and set designer David J. Miller’s tutelage, Zeitgeist creates a spectacle on a shoestring: there is an amusing horseback joust between Ludwig/Lohengrin and Queen Marie/Telramund, and rose petals let loose from the ceiling of Neuschwanstein’s fabled bed chamber, where James and Henry Lee finally consummate their passion. Costumer Seth Bodie supplies an impressive passel of frilly period wear. But I didn’t know there were this many bad wigs in the world, much less in one small-theater budget. There is an appealing performance by Jon Ferreira as seductive bad-boy James, and Elisa MacDonald brings sweetness not just to Ludwig’s humpbacked fiancée, Princess Sophie, but also to the Texas homecoming queen torn between two guys who really want each other. Alas, Brian Quint giggles and blubbers his way through Ludwig, and he’s not as bad as the play. For all its operatic pretensions, including the enshrinement at beginning and end of a glimmering crystal swan redolent of Lohengrin, the music of which punctuates the proceedings, Valhalla is more galumphing odd duck than Wagnerian trumpeter.