Making a show about making a show

NEW YORK - Hold a mirror up to a mirror and you'll get multiple reflections - and a sense of the new Broadway season's first production, the bracketed and lower-cased

{title of show

}.

The show, as spunky and smart as it is reflective and brazen, literally feeds on itself for content. It's about two gay guys, Broadway musical queens at heart if not overtly, and two actresses who decide to create a new musical with them. One of the men, Jeff, is a struggling lyricist and the other, Hunter, a struggling playwright. Their two pals, Susan and Heidi are - yes! - struggling.

So {title of show} is a new musical about four people trying mightily to create a new musical. But don't stop there. The actors playing the roles are playing themselves. Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell dynamically re-live their story on stage as if for the first time - and the two actresses, sassy Susan Blackwell and the effusive Heidi Blickenstaff, show how they shaped the musical.

{title of show} is, in fact, a dream come true about a dream come true: It's a Broadway debut for everyone but Blickenstaff (The Little Mermaid) and for her, it's a first big-deal Broadway role. The fine keyboardist Larry Pressgrove, music director for Cats on Broadway, plays onstage throughout; he's also been with the show from its inception.

So here's the circularity, in full bloom: {title of show} is a new musical. It's about a new musical that itself is a about a new musical. Mirrors in mirrors. It's directed with an eye for irony by Michael Berresse, whose involvement is apt - he was playing Zach, the director/choreographer who oversees A Chorus Line, then left the revival to direct and choreograph {title of show} in real life at the Lyceum, down the street, where it opened Thursday. We're running out of mirrors here.

{title of show} plumbs the same theatrical aspirations as A Chorus Line, but at a stratospheric level. These guys start writing for fun in cramped apartments so they can enter the annual New York Musical Theatre Festival competition. They have no name for their musical about making a musical, so in the official entry form's space for "title of show," they write {title of show}. In relatively short order, they have off-Broadway on their minds, and then, the Whole Shebang. (That you are watching this impossible dream on Broadway makes it all the more bizarre.)

The musical is not immediately likable. It starts off referring to itself and New York theater life awkwardly, dropping so many theater-world names as it goes that it initially seems more like a Broadway postal route than a show. But then it becomes playfully confusing - is it real conversation about making a show, or is it a scripted show?

When it develops a solid plot, and fully displays the tensions that come with making art, [title of show] gets better with each scene. Hard-knuckle numbers like the show-stopper "Die Vampire, Die!" about self-doubt, and a lovely finale that explores quality, boost its power. Once {title of show} grabs you, you're in its thrall.

The actors say this is a show about the theater. Yes, but as in A Chorus Line, theater's only a vehicle. The more these sincere, talented folks sing about the tough world they'll die to conquer, the more universal they become. You don't have to make theater to identify with {title of show}, you just have to want something meaningful.