‘Hold On to Me Darling’ review: Kenneth Lonergan looks at celebrity

This should be a cartoon, this sprawling and marvelous comedy about a millionaire Country Western star and his life crises back in the small Texas town that born him. We really ought to be laughing at him and his loyal roadie, at the lonely women who adore him and at the quirky ways they all talk about the world of massive celebrity and the minutiae of ordinary life.

And yet “Hold On to Me Darling,” Kenneth Lonergan’s major new play after being away from theater too long, keeps pulling us back from the edge of smugness. He makes his characters say something so wise, so funny or so heartbreaking that they leap from rural comic strips into individuals fascinating and fully formed enough to be the subject of their own tragedies. Lonergan, a Pulitzer finalist for “The Waverly Gallery” and an Oscar nominee for “You Can Count on Me,” writes so gorgeously that familiar types keep surprising with the depth of their charm and humanity.

Timothy Olyphant is irresistible as Strings McCrane, a superstar with such humble grandiosity that he seems completely honest — for as long as it takes to say something. Strings has abandoned the set of his outer-space movie and the tour for his new album to come home for the funeral of his mother — an equally intriguing unseen force. This is all directed with gentle mercilessness by Neil Pepe on a hyper-ambitious Walt Spangler set of revolving locations. And the cast — Keith Nobbs as the loyal yes man, Jenn Lyon as the manipulative massage therapist, Adelaide Clemens as the nobody’s-fool schoolteacher, C.J. Wilson as Strings’ ever-surprising big brother and even Jonathan Hogan’s cameo as Strings’ long-lost father — is spectacular.