A critic — or at least this critic — enjoys celebrating great theater. Just as a playwright, the actors and everyone else involved with producing a show want it to be a magical and memorable experience for the audience, a critic — or at least this critic — simply wants a play to do something peculiar, something worth writing about.

"It’s Only a Play," continuing through June 28 at Hawaii Theatre, is an odd piece, offering an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the relationships between theater people and their critics. This show, on the surface, offers a lot of potential intrigue.

It had an off-off-Broadway run and an off-Broadway run in the mid-1980s before finally making it to bigger theaters on Broadway in 2014, about 30 years later. Why the delay? The Broadway run was fueled by a star-stuffed cast that included Nathan Lane as actor James Wicker and Matthew Broderick as playwright Peter Austin, plus supporting roles for Stockard Channing and Rupert Grint of "Harry Potter" fame. What attracted that high level of talent to this musty script? And what inspired the local theater community to bring it here? We all want to know.

The Broadway show closed June 7, and this Hawaii production is the first in the nation to follow, with the author’s New York-based assistant, Logan Reed, turned director. It is sparked by the local celebrity of Joe Moore, billed as "Hawaii’s most watched TV newscaster," playing Wicker, and Paul Mitri, chairman of the University of Hawaii’s Department of Theatre and Dance, playing Austin, plus the inclusion of veteran performers Linda Purl (as producer Julia Budder) and Cathy Foy (as actress Virginia Noyes).

Even with all of this potential, though, "It’s Only a Play" generally lives down to its title. It has a relentlessly slow plot stacked upon very thin tension over what the next day’s reviews of the unseen show, "The Golden Egg," will be. The story, in intricate and interesting ways, creates a refraction of what is playing out onstage, in front of the audience, with a lot of insider guffaws and industry digs.

The playwright, Terrence McNally, has won numerous accolades, including four Tony awards, and his work varies tremendously, including "Corpus Christi," a retelling the story of Jesus as a gay man in Texas; "Ragtime," about U.S. culture at the start of the 20th century; and "The Full Monty," a comedy about stripping steelworkers. All of those are fascinating in their own ways.

"It’s Only a Play," though, is something different for McNally, and for most theater audiences, but that’s not necessarily an endorsement.

Without much of a plot (will there be a second night of the show?), one might think this piece would deeply develop its small ensemble of characters. Besides the admirable efforts of Ryan Wuestewald (as director Frank Finger) and moments of authenticity by other members of the cast, most notably Mitri as the theater-loving idealist, most of the performances remain mired in caricature mode. If these people were written and performed better, maybe, this all might work well, at least with the right crowd. Moments of brilliance, in the writing and in the performances, provide promise.

This dialogue-heavy show, lasting nearly three hours on a static set, reflects upon the theater world and some of its better-known personalities in often unusual and unflattering ways. It bemoans the Disney hits on Broadway, for example, and rampant narcissism, along with the lack of national support for the theater arts, and the producers/investors in the business who are just trying to make a million. The biggest laugh of the piece on opening night Thursday was when the cast, just about to read a review, decided to take a selfie to commemorate the occasion.

Many local references — to Moore’s "Wrestling With Ernest Hemingway" and "Hawaii ­Five-0," to name two — were inconspicuously inserted into the script. The most laughs seem to come from the harshest reviews glibly doled out to the group as punishment for trying so hard to do something important.

In such ways, this piece challenges audiences, critics and, most poignantly, the theater people, to push themselves and their art into new realms, to discuss critical topics in innovative ways and to develop new audiences with an appreciation for what the theater does well, while ignoring the negative noise. It is that neglected stakeholder in this play’s world, the audience member, who ultimately will chose whether to like it. No critic or theater purist can force that response, as much as this show suggests it.