In the intimate Pennsylvania Playhouse Theatre, jazz music plays and a doo-wop quartet harmonize as a parade of characters enter the stage. Dorothy and The Cowardly Lion, Marilyn and Joe, Scarlett and Rhett, Cleopatra, a crazy-eyed Norma Desmond and more wave to fans as they enter and exit the stage, setting the first scene for a 1940s red carpet in “City of Angels,” continuing at 7:30 p.m. June 17 and 18 and 6 p.m. June 19.

The comedy, written by Larry Gelbart with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel, blends the real life of crime novelist Stine (Ian Gilkeson) and the fictional life of his greatest creation, gumshoe detective Stone (Rody Gilkeson). Playhouse director Bill Mutimer and lighting designer Brett Oliviera seamlessly blend these two worlds of fantasy and fiction through tricks of lighting and staging of the characters, creating a truly magical night of theater.

Stine writes what he knows, and so many of the characters that fill his reality also play into the fictional pages of his work. Even the character’s lines are taken from the mouths of the important people in Stine’s life. This occurs most often with the women who surround him with love and drama: his wife Gabby (Rebecca Pieper-Braun), his mistress, and his secretary Donna (Elizabeth Marsh-Gilkeson) and his director’s wife Carla (Heather Reese).

The women, as with other cast members, are cast in double roles that portray the lives of bot Stine and Stone. Pieper-Braun oozes charm as lounge singer Bobbi, Marsh-Gilkeson nabs some of the first and heartiest laughs in the play as Stone’s loyal but platonic secretary Oolie, and Reese flawlessly glides on stage as femme fatale Alaura Kingsley, whose missing stepdaughter Stone must find in order to solve the mystery.

As one can expect from a show that finds its roots in post-Prohibition Los Angeles, nearly every scene also stars an alcoholic beverage. Cocktails, scotches, martinis and beers spend almost as much time on the stage as the actors do. It’s enough to make one wish that the Pennsylvania Playhouse served something a little stronger than bottled water at intermission. The adult beverages serve as a perfect backdrop for the insanely swift and snappy dialogue and lyrics, and all the actors involved attack them with a ferociousness that would make your head spin if you weren’t too busy laughing at the lines. There a double entendre every other minute and the witty retorts and one-liners fly from the actors’ lips like gun bullets in a film-noir crime movie.

Zippel’s lyrics twist, turn and tangle but never trap the actors who croon with panache backed up by a fantastic (though unseen) live, 13-piece jazz orchestra directed by Lucille Kincaid.

By far, some of the best lines come out of the character of Stine’s producer, Buddy Fidler (Chip Rohrbach), who schmoozes his way through Hollywood, twisting Stine’s arm and moral tendencies in order to turn the crime novel into a hit movie. “Everybody’s in a movie,” says Fidler. “Sometimes we just turn the camera on.”

As the plot progresses, it’s clear that author Stine’s life is unraveling even as Detective Stone gets closer to solving the mystery. Book readers who loathe watching their beloved pages change when the movie version comes out in theaters will feel Stine’s pain as he watches his plot and characters change to match both Fidler’s and the Motion Picture Association of America ’s strict guidelines of the period. As McCarthyism started to scare the directors of the time, Fidler forces Stine to change a major plot point or be blacklisted from show business forever.

The twist in question centers around the anger of Detective Stone’s former partner on the police force, Lt. Munoz (Seth Rohrbach). After Stone gets away with a murder with merely a slap on the wrist, Munoz confronts him about it, stating that the only reason Stone is free is because he’s white. “Heads or tails, you always win,” Munoz fumes, “as long as the heads are blonde.” Fidler commands Stine to get rid of any dialogue dealing with race and Stine begrudgingly acquiesces.

This makes a very important point about how, even today in the real world, some police officers in recent high-profile cases seem to get away with murder. However, it is odd that for a plot that wants to advance positive social justice, they couldn’t find a Hispanic man to play the single Hispanic role in a community that is more than 40 percent Hispanic or Latino. The part is instead played by Seth Rohrbach who does a fantastic job in one of only two dance numbers in the play, the riotously funny “All You Have To Do Is Wait,” but he plays the part with a barely authentic Spanish accent that almost detracts from his great acting.

“City of Angels” shows us that the heart and soul of Hollywood can be darker than audiences realize, but while Stine constructs his character’s lives, he fails to see that they are changing him as well. This is shown in the rousing duet to end Act I between Stine and Stone “You’re Nothing Without Me,” sung by real life father and son Rody and Ian Gilkeson. Their voices fill the theater with gusto and earned fantastic applause before intermission. That song was reprised by the end of Act II by the whole cast and became the show’s literal 11 o’clock number, since the cast took their final bows after a whopping three hours.

It’s definitely worth the time spent in a great theater, transported to a time that looks and sounds very different from ours today, but still bears the same issues that surround our everyday lives if our everyday lives were spent on Hollywood stages.

Tickets: paplayhouse.org, 610-865-6665