Laughter fills Theater J’s home on 16th Street NW through May 24 with the world premiere of a five-character comedy called “The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall.”

Now, the sound of laughter isn’t exactly unknown in the 238-seat Goldman Theatre. After all, laughter punctuates many of the serious explorations of morality and the human condition that Theater J often offers. The company has even hosted a whimsical klezmer musical, and Theodore Bikel’s program of stories about author Sholom Aleichem had the word in its title: “Laughter Through the Years.”

But rarely has the theater resounded to such continuous mirth as it does right now with actor/monologist Josh Lefkowitz carrying the audience through the trials and tribulations of the lead character in Sam Forman’s tale of a 20-something, would-be writer who dreams of making a Broadway musical out of Woody Allen’s famous 1977 film.

To have a fine time watching this comedy, you really don’t need to know a thing about Woody Allen or the movie in which he starred as a neurotic New Yorker whose relationship with the title character (Diane Keaton) just doesn’t work out. The story and the humor in Forman’s script are strong enough to carry you along without an encyclopedic recall of all things Woody.

But if you have a chance to do as one character in the play does, rent the movie from Netflix or a local video store and screen it once or twice, the play will have even more delights.

Author Sam Forman seems to be following the old adage, “Write about what you know about,” in creating this comedy about a young man trying to write the book and lyrics for a musical. He is, after all, a young man who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical “I Sing!” He has recently written another musical, something called “Broadway’s Next Season,” which has yet to be produced.

Forman came to the attention of Theater J when the late Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who was at the theater for the premiere of her last play, told Artistic Director Ari Roth about two of her promising students including him in that short list. Since then, Forman has worked on television pilots, written plays as well as other musicals, and performed on off-Broadway stages in New York.

Not only does his “The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall” deal with problems Forman must have experienced while trying to create a musical, it is presented as if it were autobiographical. The character of the writer addresses the audience directly, acting as the narrator of the piece.

Forman isn’t playing the part of the writer. Instead, Josh Lefkowitz takes the stage, and in the manner that has been so engaging when he charmed local audiences with his own autobiographical monologues (the lengthily titled “Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century” and the more precise “Now What?”) he walks us through the saga of Forman’s story.

As a monologist, Lefkowitz knows how to engage and charm an audience not just with words, but in posture, gesture and a remarkable ability to seem as if he’s making eye contact with everyone even if he’s under bright lights and can’t really see out into the dark. As an actor, he brings to the stage a natural ease which he polished in a number of dramatic roles at local theaters. He was the son in Woolly Mammoth's production of “The Mineola Twins,” the flighty young Dauphin in Olney's “Saint Joan,” and the questioning medic in Signature Theatre's “One Red Flower.”

Two women complete and complicate the writer’s life. One is his girlfriend of 12 years who just happens to be named “Annie.” Played with a nice light touch in the premiere by Tessa Klein, who was so much fun in Theater J’s “Sleeping Arrangements” two years ago, this “Annie” has many of the traits of Woody Allen’s own “Annie,” and the relationship between the narrator and his girlfriend is just as tenuous. He complains that despite sharing a Murphy bed in their Manhattan apartment, they haven’t had sex in four months or, as the narrator puts it, “since, like, the invention of Twitter.”

The other woman in the play isn’t listed by name, just by description. She’s “Producer’s Daughter,” an Ivy Leaguer who the narrator researches through her Facebook page because her father was one of the producers of the movie “Annie Hall,” and he hopes she can help him get the rights to “musicalize” the screenplay. Maureen Rohn makes her Washington debut in the role and is an impressively bright presence. She lands some of the sharpest barbs of the night with aplomb.

Washington veteran actor and director, Alexander Strain, who is Theater J’s associate artist-in-residence this season, has another of the play’s roles which go by a description rather than a name. He plays “Tortured Genius,” an established composer with strong family ties to musical theater. Perhaps the character isn’t given a name because it is a bit too close to identifiable for longtime musical theater buffs. (The description of the family ties drew knowing chuckles on press night.) In the play, “Tortured Genius” already has a commission to make a musical out of “Annie Hall,” and the narrator’s task becomes getting the chance to write the musical with him.

With the exception of the delightful performance by Lefkowitz, the most fun of the night comes from Matthew A. Anderson, who emerges from the background where his talents went largely unnoticed in Theater J’s “David in Shadow and Light” and “Shlemiel the First” last year. He scores a host of belly laughs and an equal number of warm chuckles and smiles as the pot-smoking best friend of the narrator with whom he originally wants to write his musical.

They go back a long way, having written a musical version of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” together in college. A song from that musical, “Birds of a Feather,” is the closing event of this delightful, mostly non-musical comedy.

Anderson gets to deliver some of Forman’s funnier lines. While puffing on a pot pipe, he suggests updating Shakespeare as a musical about the new administration in Washington with the title “Titus Obamicus” or basing a show on a selection of Russian short stories as “When Pushkin Comes to Shove.”

The script is peppered with funny lines and bits for the rest of the cast as well. Lefkowitz’s physical comedy includes scrunching down in order to deliver the line, “Woody Allen is standing over my shoulder.” Some gags are a bit more obscure, however. He cements his reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool theater person by pointing out that he worked at the drama book store in high school, something only funny to other dyed-in-the-wool theater people.

This refreshing comedy plays Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Tickets are $21 to $55 and can be purchased online at www.washingtondcjcc.org.

Brad Hathaway is the editor/reviewer for Potomac Stages, a website and e-mail service covering theater in Washington, Maryland and Virginia (www.PotomacStages.com). He has written about theater for Theatre.Com, Musical Stages Online, The Connection Newspapers and such magazines as American Theatre, Show Music, the Sondheim Review and Live Design. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill. He can be reached by e-mail at Brad@PotomacStages.com.