NEW YORK – Theatergoers could be forgiven for approaching something called “Gutenberg! The Musical!” with a healthy skepticism. And those skeptics could probably be divided into two crowds.

The first figures sawdust would be a more interesting subject for live theater than the inventor of the printing press. The second suspects a self-conscious, smug meta-musical, a show about a show. And do we really need another one of those?

Of course not. Unless it’s hysterically funny. And this one is.

The premise: Two 30-somethings with dreams of Broadway success are pitching their musical, a big production holding up Gutenberg as the savior of illiterate Schlimmer, Germany, to an audience of producers.

Only it’s a low-budget reading, so the musical’s authors play all the parts – our hero printer, an evil monk, a wench named Helvetica and a couple of drunks, among others – delineated only by blue trucker caps with character names scribbled on them.

In less talented hands this could all be a well-intentioned disaster. But writers Anthony King and Scott Brown produced an uproarious script – plenty twisted and just culture-conscious enough, so the show doesn’t strangle itself with hipness.

Even better, the two theater types pitching “Gutenberg!” to the producers are played by Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos, whose exquisite comic timing leaves the audience howling with laughter.

(Well, except for one older couple who walked out of a recent preview after an early joke about a dead baby – prompting Shamos to deliver an impossible-to-plan ad-lib that may have gotten the biggest laugh of the night.)

Fitzgerald, a bug-eyed spark plug of an actor who was part of the original Broadway company of the juggernaut “Wicked,” flat-out carries the show. He is so unfailingly energetic and devoted to its ridiculousness that you can’t help going along with him and laughing.