Not a bad premise for a little Christmas musical: What ultimately happens to O’Henry’s loving young couple from “The Gift of the Magi,” the story where she sells her hair to buy him a chain for the pocket watch he sold to buy her a set of fancy combs.

Burt Bacharach, certainly a seasoned song-writer, and Steven Sater, flying high as a wordsmith after making “Spring Awakening” work on Broadway, have partnered to do the job with SOME LOVERS, now in its world premiere run at the Old Globe’s White Theatre.

It’s a perky staging by one of the bright new kids, Will Frears, and he has lots of help, including gilt-edged orchestrator Jonathan Tunick working with an eight-piece band. And Tunick is billed below one Annmarie Milazzo who has done something called “vocal design.”

So, lots of serious effort here. But the problem is... well, that’s just it. What IS the problem? Why all the rue and anguish?

The cast offers two versions of the same couple, a young pair reveling in their cute meet and an older, presumably wiser duo years deep into a relationship cruelly marred by... something: Writer’s block? Idealism? Key misunderstandings? Self-destructive instincts? Paranoid caution? Flop sweat?

Whatever, the thrust of the story is to make everything OK enough to live happily ever after. You won’t get the result out of me but then, maybe you don’t need to. Maybe you can intuit it.

The show shambles along for a single long act, sprinkled with references to the O’Henry story and Burt Bacharach-type songs – cheerful, vague, rhythmic but not pushy, sometimes catchy – all anchored by annual Christmas splurges at the Plaza Hotel. The boy is aw-shucks and raring to unleash his talent upon the world; the girl obviously thinks he’s just the guy for her to make babies with.

But things start to murk up, given the old folks there as graphic evidence of coming failure. It’s a Christmas Eve in later years and he’s drinking and plinking at the piano while she keeps hanging up when he phones. There’s coaching of the old by the young, nostalgic commentary on young by old and lots of vague tension. Some zingers suddenly surface – “He resents me for believing in him!” – without sufficient context. There’s one remembered crisis involving her jealousy at his work with a prominent singer that MIGHT be a reference to Bacharach and Dionne Warwick but really, how would I know?

The 1909 O’Henry story ends in a cloud of euphoria with true love affirmed and her hair already growing back. (Too bad about his heirloom watch, I always thought sadly.) But SOME LOVERS is clearly a play written a cynical century later. The ending is as irony-stained as the rest of the piece.

The younger couple get all the best stuff even if they don’t have as many solos. Andrew Mueller is like Huck Finn with a musical gift, fearless and fizzy with energy. The lovely Jenni Barber projects such raw hunger that her way of oozing over every piece of furniture merely seems an adorable eccentricity, like lifting one foot when she’s kissed. Together they epitomize hot jungle lust.

Jason Danieley and Michelle Duffy must mope as the oldsters and that’s not nearly as much fun, especially when their motivation is such SECRET sorrow. I can’t believe him as a songwriter, an ardent lover or even a drunk, so indecisively does he play the part. And she excels mostly when she’s listening. There’s no clear clue how the bubbly girl became this sad, defeated woman.

The eight musicians (wherever they’re hidden!) sound like four or five most of the time, a shocking result from the arranger who did all of Stephen Sondheim’s scores. Lon Hoyt is the pianist/conductor probably because he’s so comfortable with the breezy Bacharach style. (Duffy singing “Just Walk Away” could be right out of the old Bacharach-Warwick–Hal David days.)

The stark set is by Takeshi Kata, the non-committal costumes are from Jenny Mannis and Ben Stanton has handled the pools of light and harsh side spotlights.

Is there any hope for this piece? Maybe if the right author could be found to construct a book that holds together, the music and lyrics could be winched into coherence. But art about artists having trouble doing art is tricky stuff. The agonies of creation need to be comprehensible for audiences and SOME LOVERS right now doesn’t come close to doing this.

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