Marla Mindelle, who memorably spoofed Celine Dion in the still-running Off Broadway hit Titanique (a show that she co-wrote), has returned to the land of musical-theater send-ups with The Big Gay Jamboree, a hilarious and tuneful new production at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village. Mindelle co-wrote the bouncy, pastiche-heavy score (with Philip Drennen) as well as the laugh-a-minute book (with Jonathan Parks-Ramage), which plays like a mash-up of TV’s Schmigadoon! and Severance. She also stars as a 38-year-old failed actress named Stacey, who wakes up after a drunken bender of an evening to find herself as the soon-to-be wed bride in the middle of a 1940s-style musical where everybody breaks out into song when they aren’t dropping hilarious non sequiturs. As in Schmigadoon, the setting is a self-isolated town, improbably named Bareback, Idadho, where there’s no obvious means of escape — though a woman with an underutilized BFA in theater studies may have an edge in unpacking potential exits.

Her knowledge of theatrical tropes leads her into the arms of potential allies like the sweetheart Clarence (Paris Nix, blessed with gilded voice), a Black man who’s relegated to a supporting role singing gospel numbers despite his obvious “main character energy,” a sex-positive young woman who blithely rejects old-fashioned mores (Natalie Walker, a doyenne of deadpan), and the beefy but closeted Bert (Constantine Rousouli, another Titanique alum). Like the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, they’re eager to join their Dorothy in a quest to leave their own personal Ozian prison for a more modern time and place that might prove more welcoming.

Mindelle’s musical-theater savvy generates some genuinely side-splitting moments, like a reworking of “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music to teach the “gay-B-Cs” of queer culture. Or the musical and visual nods to everything from A Chorus Line to Les Misérables to Rent. The scenic design, by the collective dots, boasts a stylized sophistication that belies its simplicity (there are even turntables on the stage floor), with clever animated projections (by Aaron Rhyne), striking lighting (by Brian Tovar), and witty costumes (by Sarah Cubbage) that all add a degree of show-world verisimilitude — especially when the enterprise takes a topical detour into AI-land courtesy of Stacey’s back-in-the-real-world boyfriend, a self-centered Silicon Valley bro played with hilariously douchey eccentricity by SNL alum Alex Moffat.

Connor Gallagher directed and choreographed the production with a polish and propulsive pacing that helps disguise some of the narrative hiccups of the deeply silly plot. But it’s Mindelle, an irresistibly winsome performer with a mellifluous voice, who coaxes us through the unorthodox twists and turns in the story as well as the sometimes breakneck shifts in tone. She’s an undeniable talent, and The Big Gay Jamboree has all the earmarks and earworms of another long-running Off Broadway hit.

THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE
Orpheum Theatre, Off Broadway
90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets on sale through Jan. 19