Tall and lanky with a crop of spiky dark brown hair and a still boyish face, Gavin Creel looks like he’s decades away from a midlife crisis. And yet that’s just what he claims in the opening number of his virtual one-man show, Walk on Through, which opened Monday at Broadway’s MCC Theater. The Tony-winning musical-theater veteran’s “mid-life moment” takes him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — a landmark he says he’s never entered despite two decades living in New York City. (“But it is on the Upper East Side,” he jokes.) What follows is an unusual musical tour of some of the museum’s signature works, with an emphasis on 20th-paintings. Creel has composed more than a dozen songs for the occasion, which straddle the line between pop and show tunes and that serve his strong tenor vocals (backed by a four-member band).

There’s a disco-ish ode to hot guys inspired by the buff physiques of ancient Greek and Roman statues, and a sped-up patter song about feeling “scattered and scared and stuck right here” based on a 1950 drip painting by Jackson Pollock. Ryan Vasquez, who’s about to star in Broadway’s The Notebook, steps in for duets like dueling takes on the isolated figure in the window of an urban apartment in a 1928 Edward Hopper painting, while Sasha Allen delivers a diva-worthy power ballad as the Biblical heroine Judith, “the bitch who saved the day” by seducing and then killing an Assyrian general threatening Jerusalem (as depicted in a famed painting by 16th century master Lucas Cranach the Elder. All of the tunes are supplemented by animated projections (by David Bengali) to emphaszie key details of the works in question, on a set by I. Javier Ameijeiras that hints at the Met’s austere classical facade.

Several of Creel’s songs have only tangential connection to the art, and the more autobiographical material — including a rote reference to the recent pandemic shutdown of the museum — tends to be the weakest. Plus, there’s a sameyness to the songs, which tend to culminate in Creel hitting some of his highest notes in melismatic runs, again and again and again. Still, there are several gems — particularly a quieter story-driven song describing three works (by Gregory Crewdson, Cindy Sherman and Robert Heinecken) that feature lone female figures in moments of contemplation or transition. Creel’s lyrics here are among his most bracingly poetic: “Hey, I know you. / I’ve been where you are / You wishing on some dyin’ star- / ting up again / you can’t do it then…” That fluid shift from star to starting carries a delicate power that underscores the melancholy, as well as Creel’s efforts to help us identify with the two-dimensional figures on the wall.

Walk on Through, which was commissioned by the Met itself, is a curious project that struggles to offer a compelling narrative throughline for what are, in essence, scattershot standalone songs on the theme of connecting to the visual arts. But there’s no denying Creel’s talents as a songwriter and performer, and he’s a more than decent docent. Linda Goodrich directs.