The in-joke’s on us

Paparazzi aplenty thronged the sidewalks outside the Coast Playhouse on Wednesday night. The occasion? The star-studded world premiere of Roger Kumble’s “Turnaround,” featuring David Schwimmer, best known as the diffident Ross Geller on the long-running television series “Friends.”

Such hoopla surrounding a sub-99-seat theater venue is rare. However, does the play inside stand the glare of public scrutiny as well as the tanned, toned celebrities who turned out on opening night?

With the exception of a few unsightly wrinkles, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Kumble’s mordant examination of Hollywood hucksterism is witty and uncompromising stuff, a riotously funny package that builds in dramatic intensity -- tear gas leaking out of a whoopee cushion.

Whether it would set house records in Topeka is doubtful. When curtains open to reveal the Hollywood sign through the upstage windows of Greg Grande’s well-crafted set, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. To fully appreciate Kumble’s carefully crafted microcosm, not to mention the proliferation of industry in-jokes, you must possess a working knowledge of “the business.” If so, then you and this play will probably be on the same page -- or more appropriately, pager.

The writer-director of such high-profile films as 1999’s “Cruel Intentions,” Kumble has done a few fast laps in the Hollywood sewer and knows whereof he speaks. “Turnaround” is the third play in his vaguely autobiographical Hollywood trilogy, which includes “Pay or Play” and “d-girl,” both of which also revolved around the character of Jeff (Schwimmer), a Hollywood sleaze-meister who probably subscribes to Faulkner’s old adage, “If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate.”

In the absence of a mother, a best friend will do. A hack screenwriter turned hack director, Jeff has reached a career nadir as “Turnaround” commences -- and the fact that his producer friend Richie (Jonathan Silverman) is on a hot streak isn’t helping. Neither are all the drugs Jeff has been using lately. Increasingly desperate, Jeff hangs his hopes on a new script by his friend Gary (Tom Everett Scott), a coke and crack addict who ultimately lands in rehab. When the newly sober Gary threatens to derail Jeff’s recently green-lighted project, Jeff goes on the attack -- viciously and uncompromisingly.

In Act 2, the action turns predictable and preachy, never quite making a point beyond a relentless explication of the sordid. Fortunately, the uniformly wonderful actors richly compensate for that deficit. Kumble, who also directs, has put together an ideal cast, which includes Jaime Ray Newman as a nubile semi-hooker whose cuddly schoolgirl persona extends just as far as a man’s pocketbook, and John Di Maggio as Gary’s 12-step sponsor, a battered survivor of the Hollywood fast lane who has left the industry for a more peaceful path.

Scott, Schwimmer and Silverman are an evenly matched team, each so exceptional that it’s hard to decide whose performance is the most rewarding. But it is Schwimmer, as the brash charmer with the dark soul, who is most memorable, in all his engaging loathsomeness.

*

‘Turnaround’

Where: Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

When: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 6 and 9 p.m. (No performance Jan. 26)

Ends: March 2

Price: $30

Contact: (866) 468-3399

Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes