Brian d’Arcy James plays a struggling theater artist going up against Christian Borle’s rock-star Shakespeare in this cheeky musical comedy set in Elizabethan England

The Shakespearean references come thick and fast, along with the winking nods to a whole plethora of modern musicals, in “Something Rotten!” But the laughs in this rambunctious comedy by Broadway newcomers Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick, written with British humorist John O’Farrell and buoyed by a top-drawer cast, don’t require comprehensive recall of classical theater or a particular receptiveness for arcane Broadway in-jokes. This is a big, brash meta-musical studiously fashioned in the mold of Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” “The Producers” and “The Book of Mormon,” loaded with crowd-pleasing showstoppers, deliciously puerile gags and an infectious love of the form it so playfully skewers. While it’s been done countless times before, watching a musical that pokes fun at the very idea of a musical remains irresistible sport, especially when the digs are as celebratory as these. There’s nothing mean-spirited even in the taunts aimed at frequent spoof targets like “Cats” or “Les Miserables.” The first-act high point is a riotous self-parodying number simply titled “A Musical,” which represents with mounting excitement everything that’s ludicrous and wonderful about the form at its most ebullient — people bursting into spontaneous song; perky chorus members thronging the stage; an explosion of tappers, fan-dancing showgirls and a kickline; even the magnificently cheesy tradition of the encore reprise.