THEATER REVIEW : ‘Luck’: A Black and Blue Journey : James Lapine’s comedy at the La Jolla Playhouse is a viciously funny work in progress that is also brutally graphic. But the plucky spoof could use a good ending.

LA JOLLA —  Anyone see a bumper sticker lately that reads “I never lie, cheat or steal . . . unnecessarily”? There, in a nutshell, is the essence and ethos of James Lapine’s new comedy, “Luck, Pluck & Virtue.”

The title should tell you something. Think luck, pluck and Horatio Alger. This unrelentingly black, viciously funny spoof at the La Jolla Playhouse is based on Nathanael West’s “A Cool Million,” itself a repudiation of the Alger myths about the American dream. Lapine’s own caricaturing goes the burlesque one better, becoming a spoof of a spoof and carrying the brutality of life’s unjust rewards to relentless extremes.

That’s the game plan, of course, and it’s clear from the start when Lester Price, a loping Andy Hardy from Ohio, decides to help his mother pay off the overdue mortgage on their house in order to stave off foreclosure.

Lester’s idea of how to do that is to run off to New York, audition for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and become a star. But his dour couch-potato mom (Marge Redmond), an American gothic, believes in real jobs. “Go to Pennsylvania,” says she, “and work in the mines .”

Lester pays no attention. Wet behind the ears, this Midwestern Candide is going to follow his bliss. Before boarding the train for New York he’s offered a string of homilies under an American flag by his hometown Dr. Pangloss, a legislator by the name of Nathan Whipple (George Coe) who ends up in jail for not following his own advice.

Lester also has his Cunegonde: a high school sweetheart, Betty Ferris (Ming-Na Wen), whom he considers “the best-looking Asian girl in the class” (even if she is the only Asian girl in the class). Like Voltaire’s ill-fated heroine, Betty’s sex life makes a few unplanned detours. By the time she and Lester reconnect on the streets of New York, shared experience takes on unexpected new meaning.

On his way to the Big Apple, Lester (played with just the right boyish innocence by Neil Patrick Harris, late of TV’s “Doogie Howser, M.D.”) is robbed, conned, arrested and jailed, becoming reunited in prison with his old mentor Nathan. In his pursuit of happiness, Lester loses his teeth, an eye, a thumb, a leg, his scalp and, inevitably, his life. Details at 11.

But “Luck, Pluck & Virtue” is not about endings (it still needs to find one), it is about journeys, mostly Lester’s journey with sidekicks Betty and Nathan on the road to the American Nightmare.

Virtue he has aplenty, if terminal naivete can be considered a virtue. More useful would be a strong stomach. For the audience as well. The bad luck and sheer pluck are, shall we say, graphically depicted as Lester is buffeted from disaster to disaster with rascals abounding, Nathan ready to jump on every exploitable situation and Betty ever at hand with the right inspirational message.

“You’re too young to be a failure,” she coos in dripping sincerity at an aching and severely maimed Lester. “You have your whole life ahead of you to fail.”

Gruesome comedy? Trauma-center humor? Is this a new genre?

Not really. It’s as old as Terence, as fresh as Voltaire, as wild as Joe Orton and a bracing antidote to the plague of pious euphemism brought on by the recent infatuation with political and other correctness. But graphic it also is, with blood, pus, popping glass eyes, snapping bear traps, severed thumbs, flying dentures and toothless grins. Lapine defuses the vulgarity simply by overdoing it. You laugh in total revulsion.

“Luck” is a harsh comedy for recession-plagued Southern California (foreclosures, anyone?) that lets in some much-needed fresh air on the whole delusional issue of family values and is a reality check of historical scope. (Not by accident is there more than one reference to Thomas Jefferson and the slaves of Monticello--replete with inaccuracies. But what’s a rude comedy without a little license?)

West’s bitter lampooning is matched by an almost horrifying playfulness at Lapine’s hands, and matched again by the simple inventiveness of Adrianne Lobel’s bright sets, Chris Parry’s cheery lights, and everyone’s gleeful contributions to a broad and highly physical style of acting--especially Redmond’s in a string of roles that work as a running gag.

Lapine runs into trouble only at the end, after a knockabout summing up of what Lester should have done with his life instead of what he did , in a sequence aptly called Lester’s Dream.

The moments that follow are, for the time being, anticlimactic, a reminder that this is still very much a work in progress. An odd work. An off-the-wall work. A virulent comedy with a feeling heart and a lacerating mind. In short, virtuously top-drawer stuff that, with a little luck and pluck, one should hear a lot more about.

*”Luck, Pluck & Virtue,” La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Theatre, UC San Diego campus, La Jolla. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 29. $25-$30; (619) 550-1010. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Neil Patrick Harris: Lester Price

George Coe: Nathan Whipple

Ming-Na Wen: Betty Ferris

Marge Redmond: Mother/others

Dan Moran: Kaplan/others

P.J. Brown: Hoffman/others

Meg MacCary: Vendor/others

David Barrera: Wellington/others

Adrianne Krstansky: Talent coordinator/others

A new play, written and directed by James Lapine and based on Nathanael West’s “A Cool Million.” Assistant director Debbie Falb. Sets Adrianne Lobel. Lights Chris Parry. Costumes Martin Pakledinaz. Dental prosthetics Tim Peirson. Sound Michael Roth. Composer Allen Shawn. Pianist Mark Danisovszky. Dramaturge Robert Blacker. Fight direction Steve Rankin. Stage manager Lori M. Doyle. Assistant stage manager Cheryl Riggins.