Officially it's a musical about a musical about Johannes Gutenberg, the man who invented the mechanical printing press sometime in the mid-15th century, but “;Gutenberg! The Musical”; could be about almost anything.

What this screwball two-act musical comedy is actually about is the efforts of two marginally talented but hugely hopeful playwrights in auditioning their new musical for an audience that—they hope!—contains at least one “;big Broadway producer”; who will like the show enough take it to Broadway. Lacking essentially everything they need for their audition performance except desperate self-confidence, the two must play and sing all the roles themselves with minimal support from a disinterested pianist.

With veteran singer/actors Tony Young and Elitei Tatafu Jr., playing the playwrights, Doug Simon and Bud Davenport respectively, Manoa Valley Theatre's Hawaii premiere production of “;Gutenberg! The Musical!”; offers odd but zany entertainment on several levels. First and foremost, “;Gutenberg”; is a tour de force showcase for Young's and Tatafu's talents as actors, singers and dancers. The men are on stage for the entire 95-minute show, and they spend almost all of it in go-for-broke mode. Watching them switch from one character to another using nothing but their voices, body language, and a collection of baseball caps to distinguish one German from another is fascinating and entertaining theater.

True, the show gives us little reason to invest emotionally in the playwrights' success or failure, let alone in Gutenberg's struggle to rescue Germany from illiteracy, but Young and Tatafu maintain the show's momentum with their talent, versatility and energy.

Sophisticated theater fans will also appreciate the satirical insights of real-life “;Gutenberg! The Musical”; playwrights Scott Brown and Anthony King. Many shows about historical figures play fast and loose with the facts, and Bud and Doug do so, too: Gutenberg is a wine presser with a blonde girlfriend named Helvetica, and he is burned alive in the town square when the good, albeit illiterate, citizens of Schlimmer discover that his printing press is a pile of junk and can't print anything—none of which actually happened.

And, Bud and Doug earnestly announce, since every contemporary musical must tackle an important social issue, and their musical is set in Germany, they've chosen the Holocaust as their important social issue and have included an “;anti-Semitic flower girl”; as one of the characters.

The actual villain is an evil monk named Monk who wants to keep Germany illiterate. Monk uses pencils and an attack cat named Satan as weapons, and he informs Gutenberg that “;the Bible says there are no second chances!”;

With a rich assortment of non sequiturs, recurring punch lines, director Rob Duval's imaginative deployment of assorted items in key scenes and comically bad songs, with titles such as “;Tomorrow Is Tonight”; and “;Monk With Me,”; MVT's “;Gutenberg! The Musical!”; lives up to the exaggerated expectations its two titular exclamation points suggest.