If you see only one mega-meta-micro-musical this year, make it “[title of show].”

A defiantly insider and yet sneakily inclusive musical about two guys who write a musical about two guys who write a musical, “[tos],” as it’s known, lovingly demolishes Broadway’s most durable art form. In its place is a sweet, raunchy, and just about irresistible portrait of how and why we tell stories.

Hunter Bell (the book writer) and Jeff Bowen (the composer/lyricist) gave themselves three weeks to put together a new musical in time to submit it for the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2004, and they chose to turn this process into the show itself. Their Pirandellian effort, which has been rejiggered to accommodate two subsequent iterations, certainly falls within the “write what you know” edict, as Messrs. Bell and Bowen — who enlisted the help of the bubbly Heidi Blickenstaff and the acerbic Susan Blackwell — know a dizzying amount about musicals. The first scene alone alludes to “The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public,” “Henry, Sweet Henry,” and “Leader of the Pack.” And that’s before the entire song devoted to some four dozen flops (“Bagels and Yox”?).

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen or even heard of these: Mr. Bell, the more casual (and vulgar) of the two creators, freely admits to having vehement opinions of shows sight unseen. Actually, you probably should worry a little. Despite the occasional temptation to pander to a wider audience as their project transfers from an off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theatre (with an eye, of course, toward Broadway), these guys make few concessions to popular tastes. And when Mr. Bowen’s sprightly, pop-burnished score throws in a musical tribute to maybe the seventh- or eighth-best-known song from “Into the Woods” without any explanation — and the audience still laughs uproariously — it may be hard for some not to feel a little bit left out.

But Mr. Bell’s book and Mr. Bowen’s lyrics, along with Michael Berresse’s empathic but relatively inconspicuous direction, have worked hard to make the writers-in-a-room dialogue palatable to everyone. Most of the dialogue tumbles plausibly from earnest to goofy to distracted to catty — there’s a line about Jeff’s mother’s winning ways at bingo that strikes me as one of the truest-sounding lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard in a musical. And who can resist this masses-be-damned preference: “I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing / Than a hundred people’s ninth-favorite thing.” Still, several neologisms have a cultivated feel — Jeff and Hunter are “showmos,” Jeff gets “hangry” if he doesn’t eat, etc. These moments, clever as they often are, throw an unwelcome spotlight on the difference between life as lived and life as scribbled down for public consumption.

They seem to know this, too. Mr. Bell offers well-crafted similes that have the tinny ring of a sitcom punch line — until Mr. Bowen finally calls him on it. But is blowing the whistle on one’s own shortcuts really enough? When a character complains that a dream sequence isn’t going anywhere mid-scene, does that excuse its presence? Does giving the women a song about how they don’t have enough to do in the show qualify as giving them enough to do? The structure has been expanded with each incarnation, and yet “[title of show]” remains a tight 90 minutes. This would indicate that the older material has been trimmed and otherwise modified, which makes the writers’ implicit “but this is how it happened” argument increasingly suspect.

That said, the new additions are mostly welcome ones. The hike in price for Broadway has spawned a deliciously pointless meta-moment, and the answering-machine messages from real-life musical theater divas have been honed even further. One such message kick-starts a plot thread about the possible replacement of Ms. Blickenstaff; this makes more sense in light of her having had a real-life Broadway stint in “The Little Mermaid,” one of many current shows held up for (mostly) affectionate mockery. (The fact that she’s still in “[title of show]” diminishes the suspense a bit, but still….)

Best of all, the totemic significance of maybe — just maybe — making it to Broadway gives audiences the feeling of being present at not just a very funny musical comedy but at the triumphant end of a fraught and fulfilling road. It is this unironic embrace of the process as well as the product that ultimately makes “[title of show]” more than just a string of in-jokes for the sole benefit of musical theater geeks.

And just when things seem a bit too insular, there’s Ms. Blickenstaff plunging deep into your emotional wheelhouse with the nostalgic ballad “A Way Back to Then.” (Truth be told, Ms. Blickenstaff is the only one of the four performers who feels totally at home vocally in the Lyceum Theatre, which, at 922 seats, is more than seven times the size of the Vineyard.) There’s Mr. Bell’s open-faced insistence at making Broadway a little bit safer for masturbation jokes and less-than-svelte guys who shimmy well. There’s Ms. Blackwell’s stirring battle cry against the “vampires” who besiege the creative process, especially those who do so from within. There’s Mr. Bowen and his “Cats” ringtone and his bingo-winning mother. (And don’t forget Larry Pressgrove, the ever-present and occasionally acknowledged keyboardist.) Their bawdy, brainy, blissful creation should speak to anyone who aspires to make something that nine — or 922 — people might want to hear.

Open run (149 W. 45th St., between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, 212-239-6200).