The cast of Signature’s [title of show].

The characters in [title of show], the uber-meta musical now playing at Signature Theatre, pronounce in song that they’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than 100 people’s ninth favorite thing. It’s an admirable admission, and while DCist’s assessment of them falls somewhere closer to the middle, musical theater geeks enamored by quick wit and a constant stream of clever allusions could easily be charmed into the “favorite” category.

The show’s a musical about writing a musical, and then performing that musical, and then rewriting that musical, and then performing it again… you get the picture. Hunter and Jeff (modeled after the real-life composers Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen), normally aspiring but generally lazy artists (their usual nightly routines tend to vary from reality television to masturbation rather than hours of lyric and score-writing) decide to get their “gay skills filling Playbills,” and submit a work to a musical theater festival (“The festival? The festival?” Into the Woods references are among the show’s most hilarious insider jokes). Largely for the sake of getting some female voices into the mix, they get two actress friends to join them.

The show’s earliest musical numbers, about the excitement and sheer randomness of their writing process (“The Tony Award Song” details every Broadway’s artist’s fantasy, while the melodramatic “Die Vampire Die!” is a zig-zag commentary on the demons haunting creative people). The stream-of-conscious quality of the show’s proceedings is amusing, and the snappy, slang-heavy dialogue feels like realistic patter between the characters. While some references will fly over the head of even the most loyal of musical theater devotees (“Monkeys And Playbills” is entirely devoted to weaving the titles of Broadway flops, from “Carrie” to “Smile,” into a lesson for the group), it’s kind of refreshing to have a show whose allusions feel authentic, rather than the broad comedy of Forbidden Broadway-style parody.