In the driver’s seat of the right vehicle

Show business is a tough taskmaster. Just when you thought you had achieved some sort of celebrity, you fall into obscurity, never to reemerge.

Daniel Stern, writer and star of “Barbra’s Wedding,” now in its West Coast premiere at the Falcon, probably hasn’t had to wrangle with the problems confronted by Jerry Schiff, the character he plays in his deceptively frothy comedy. It’s likely that Stern (“Home Alone,” “City Slickers”) hasn’t punched a time clock recently.

Jerry hasn’t been forced to that pass yet, but he’s close. An embattled actor, Jerry had a brief flirtation with fame eight years ago as a series regular on the TV sitcom “Everything’s Peachy.” Now out of work, out of cash and scraping bottom, Jerry constantly refinances his modest Malibu house just for operating expenses. Jerry’s long-suffering wife, Molly (Crystal Bernard), is fed up, not so much by Jerry’s penury as by his defensively over-inflated ego. Now the Schiffs’ neighbor, Barbra Streisand, who obviously doesn’t even know that the Schiffs exist, is getting married on her massive Malibu estate next door. As helicopters hover overhead, Jerry is left to ponder -- why wasn’t he invited?

The focus of Keith E. Mitchell’s splendid set is an upstage window that reveals the looming opulence of Malibu-by-the-sea -- a noted contrast to the house’s make-do interior. Through that window, we see Jeremy Pivnick’s superb lighting as it subtly shifts from broad daylight to evening. Effectively disorienting, Robert Arturo Ramirez’s thrumming sound design captures the cacophony of the huge media event just outside the Schiffs’ door.

Barbra’s ballyhooed wedding is a witty setup -- but for a time, one fears that the play might itself devolve into a sitcom. The action commences with irritating slowness, and early conversations between Molly and Jerry are so irritatingly circular that they seem like mere filler in a standard vanity piece.

But that initial slightness is largely misleading. Indeed, Stern winds up addressing some surprisingly hefty matters, such as how to readjust a lifelong dream that has turned nightmarish, how to break an emotional stalemate and shore up a crumbling marriage, and most importantly, how to recalibrate one’s own ossifying personality, the “role” assumed in the flush of youth, to fit the bottom billing of middle age.

In short, “Barbra’s Wedding” adds up to more than just a couple of actors spinning their wheels in a star vehicle. Yet in one sense, this is a star vehicle in the best sense. Stern has crafted the role of Jerry to suit his own considerable talents. But he has also fashioned a sensitive, well-rounded character in Molly, and Bernard, a seasoned actress from three-camera shows taped live (“It’s a Living,” “Wings”) has the chops to make the most of her comic opportunities.

So does director Casey Stangl, who keeps the timing acerbic and the pace unflagging. Stangl maximizes the play’s farcical elements without cheapening them, particularly in a prolonged, transcendently slapstick scene that has Bernard leaping onto the towering Stern and wrestling him to the floor.

It’s while he’s groveling on the floor, exhausted and demoralized, that Stern’s Jerry delivers the most galvanic speech of the evening -- an over-the-top diatribe about the actor’s dilemma that is as bleak as it is hilarious. The monologue shows us Stern at his most assured, both as an actor and writer. It’s a transcendent moment that gives this “Wedding” star status.

*

‘Barbra’s Wedding’

Where: Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays,

4 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Oct. 9

Price: $30-$37.50

Contact: (818) 955-8101

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes