A deeply knowledgeable and generally trustworthy colleague of mine maintains that productions of Chekhov’s plays are, without fail, hideous bores. Whenever challenged on this heretical notion, he cites as Exhibit A the deep love that actors profess for the playwright’s characters, with their decorous torment. The inference is that the resulting performances are so insular, so cloistered, so in love with the actors’ own “process,” that they invariably leave the audience out of the equation.

This argument has always struck me as ludicrous, but “A Spanish Play” offers some insight into his theory. Actors can’t get enough of Yasmina Reza, either, and Classic Stage Company’s dutiful production of her Pirandellian fantasia on theatrical life features several of the long speeches and playable “layers” that prove irresistible for actors. Whether that vigorous curiosity crosses the footlights in any meaningful way is another matter altogether.

The starry cast — headed by Zoe Caldwell, making a rare return to the stage — is hardly atypical. Take a look at this list of alumni from Ms. Reza’s previous three shows to reach New York: Alan Alda, Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Linda Emond, Victor Garber, Helen Hunt, Alfred Molina, Brent Spiner, John Turturro.

Just to be clear, that is not a selective list. That is, in its entirety, the caliber of theatrical firepower that has gravitated to Ms. Reza’s middle-brow musings. Never mind that those three plays include the facile and mildly amusing “Art” — which won the Tony for Best Play over such superior fare as “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and “Freak” — and the exhaustingly pretentious “Life x 3.” (To be fair, “The Unexpected Man” had its moments of crisp, well-reasoned melancholy.)

Mr. Turturro apparently didn’t get enough of Ms. Reza in “Life x 3.” Using a new translation by David Ives, he has directed her twisty look at actors playing actors playing actors. Despite rising from their ranks, he prevents the performers from growing too infatuated with Ms. Reza’s and Mr. Ives’s strenuous aphorisms. (“Characters are us, they’re us better than we are.”) Best of all, he was wise enough to bring along “Life x 3” costar Ms. Emond, who lends her typical unassuming brilliance to the play’s most complicated role.

The five actors — Denis O’Hare, Katherine Borowitz, and a winningly plain-spoken Larry Pine round out the cast — play roles in a diverting but inconsequential Spanish potboiler about glamorous sisters, alcoholic husbands, and autumnal romance. Several of these characters are themselves performers, and Ms. Emond’s character is also seen rehearsing a mirthless Belgian play. In addition (bear with me here), each actor steps out of the narrative periodically to play the actor who has been cast in the Spanish play.

This last component allows the quintet to muse in filmed interviews — the footage appears on the back wall simultaneously — on the endlessly interesting paradoxes of life upon the boards. Endlessly interesting to actors, that is: “The director says, you’re enough, just be yourself, but what is that, myself? What is myself-the-actress? Does that exist?” In “A Spanish Play,” it certainly does.

As banal as these “personal” sequences can be, they give Mr. Turturro and his game cast some delectable contrasts. Mr. O’Hare once again uses the fidgety-oddball shtick he has employed in “Take Me Out” and “Assassins,” among other pieces, but he also peels it away to show an angrier, more somber actor frustrated at playing “an amoral wimp.” Ms. Caldwell finds even more laughs as her grande dame ricochets to smoothly manipulative diva from long-suffering Spanish matriarch, and Ms. Emond’s command of her three characters is nothing short of transfixing.

“Words are the parentheses of silence.” That eye-rolling bit of wisdom comes from the unseen director of the Spanish play, and it’s to Mr. Turturro’s credit that he ignores his fictitious counterpart’s advice. The production chugs along with a minimum of somber pauses or forced segues. (Various foreign-language productions of the piece have reportedly clocked in at over three hours, a good 90 minutes longer than CSC’s intermissionless version.)

His nimble crosscuts go a fairly long way toward disguising the fact that none of the three stories in “A Spanish Play” is all that compelling, but they don’t go far enough. And as the actors continue declaiming Ms. Reza’s bromides about their responsibility to the work, to the author, to the director, and to themselves, a dispiriting fact gradually emerges: At no point does anyone address their responsibility to the folks who actually pay to watch.

Until February 18 (136 E. 13th St., between Third and Fourth avenues, 212-352-3101).