It’s Only a Play is a poison-pen mash note to New York theater, at once gleefully bitchy and affectionate

It’s taken more than three decades for Terrence McNally’s backstage comedy It’s Only a Play to make it to Broadway. The show was bound for the Great White Way in 1978 until a disastrous Philadelphia tryout derailed those plans. But McNally never completely abandoned the project, which is set at the posh Manhattan townhouse of a Broadway producer as the cast and creative team gather for an opening-night bash to await the reviews. In the mid-’80s, there was a successful Off Broadway revival with James Coco, Christine Baranski, and Joanna Gleason. And now it’s landed on Broadway at last in a hilarious and star-packed evening of theater in-jokes that often plays like a nonmusical version of Forbidden Broadway. McNally has completely overhauled his original script, stuffing it with up-to-date references to everything from Lady Gaga to Kelly Ripa, and from Matilda to the upcoming revivals of A Delicate Balance and The Elephant Man. There are also plenty of way-inside punchlines for theater chatroom habitués: Bonus laughs for those who know that Moose Murders was a notorious Broadway flop or that if you have to pick a hometown for the show’s nervous playwright the natural choice is Corpus Christi.