I get a kick out of plays about plays. Noises Off, The Play That Goes Wrong, [title of show] all make the audience members feel like insiders in the wonderful world of theatre. Gutenberg! The Musical! on stage now at D’Youville Kavinoky Theatre has that same vibe with a heavy dose of both goof and spoof.

Doug Simon (Ricky Needham) and Zak Ward (Bud Davenport) are buddies who wrote the book and the score for a story about Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. The show about the show is actually Doug and Bud’s “staged reading” of their magnum opus with their hopes that a Broadway producer will help them realize their dream. Since there’s not a lot of documentation before the time of documentation, they took to crafting their own treatment (or what they’re calling ‘historical fiction’) to create the required pathos, romance, and “something bad” that create a Broadway show.

Director Loraine O’Donnell must have had a blast casting Needham and Ward for this one. They embrace the goofiness of this story and bring it with energy and expressiveness, and full commitment to being flat out funny. The third player in the shenanigans is cited as Chuck Basil: the performance I saw, the role went to Joe Isgar who was the perfect deadpan foil to the silliness. Not only was he a master at the piano, he was the bored and cranky announcer, too,

Doug and Bud play all the characters in their “reading,” and also break the fourth wall to explain theatre jargon, or as they say, “guys like us would say foreshadowing” and give some stage direction, too. Their character development is aided by a series of labeled baseball caps that they sometimes don in stacks to show crowd scenes.  Their roles test Needham and Ward’s singer chops, as they stretch their range from natural voice to falsetto. They were sublime in the goofiest way possible. My favorite characters were Helvetica, the lovely maiden who works for Gutenberg in his wine press (yes, he was pressed grapes before moveable type, or as the playwright’s say “one makes you drink, one makes you think”) and the rats. Yes, singing rats. How can you NOT love this?

Like the best Broadway musicals, there is a happy ending, which at this performance was an audience call and response and a walk-on role for Peter Palmisano.

Gutenberg! The Musical! runs two hours with an intermission to April 28. Find tickets and details at www.kavinokytheatre.com.