WJW Arts Correspondent

Life, the famously nebbishy Alvy Singer opined, "is divided into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible are terminal cases and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable."

If that sounds a lot like Woody Allen, it is. For those who aren't fans, or for Gen Y-ers who came of age with the darker, more morally challenged and challenging Allen oeuvres, Alvy Singer is, of course, Allen's alter ego. Alvy is also the centerpiece of the filmmaker's 1977 neurosis-laden love story Annie Hall and inspiration for many young, male Jewish nerds from New York and beyond.

The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall takes Alvy Singer into the 21st century, where texting, IMs, Google and Facebook rule the love lives of the under-30 set. The world premiere runs through May 24 at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's Goldman Theater.

Playwright Sam Forman has a thing for Woody Allenesque moments, at least the Alvy Singer kind, in this homage and take-off. Scenic designer Robbie Hayes provides a Manhattan skyline to highlight Allen's most beloved star -- the city of New York.

Rise and Fall is a small play about people muddling through, like many of Allen's earlier works. Forman's dialogue and direct address to the audience are mostly amusing, and riff lovingly on the master of neurotic paranoids.

Forman isn't an imitator, but an adapter, playing the failed artist and failed relationship cards with a degree of finesse and finding a soft spot for the broken-hearted. Thereby lies the probable success of Forman's reverence for the now-fading (or faded, depending on whom one asks) comic with the existential neurotic streak.

Rising young actor and playwright Josh Lefkowitz (who had a hit in the DC Fringe Festival with an autobiographical monologue called Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century) plays Henry, an Allen/Alvy Singer alter ego. He's a nebbishy, whiny, stuck-in-a-rut-as-a-musical-theater writer. And, as overheard in the lobby, the cute factor is not small potatoes, especially with the Jewish grandmother demographic, which on opening night fell completely for Lefkowitz. That Henry freely admits to sponging off his parents' largesse didn't bother the bubbes as much as it did his live-in girlfriend, a struggling actor.

Henry's partner, the very funny Matthew Anderson as Will, a pot-smoking, gay composer and old-time college buddy, proves a steadfast friend. It's his girlfriend, Annie -- Tessa Klein is no glorified shiksa goddess a la Diane Keaton -- who despairs as an unhappy, overworked, underpaid, starving actor.

Meanwhile, Henry strikes up a friendship with a producer's daughter to get his Annie Hall musical in the right hands.

Annie Hall, Henry notes, is perfect for the Broadway ticket-buying public: "70-year-old Jewish New Yorkers É not people like us." That is, poor, struggling artists, clad in geek-chic tattered T-shirts and grungy jeans, too-new Converse All-Stars and retro horn-rimmed glasses -- costume designer Deb Sivigny's work.

Henry sets out to ingratiate himself with a producer's daughter for a chance at wooing Allen. His Allenesque technique, updated from culling personal information from a shrink, involves memorizing the producer's daughter's Facebook profile.

Maureen Rohn plays her blond and beautiful nameless character as an emblematic failed rich kid, who only wants to be happy.

When Alexander Strain does Rohn's unnamed character one better in the pretentious category playing his "Tortured Genius," also unnamed, character with deep-voiced bravado, it's hard not to notice that this character bears an uncanny resemblance to rising Broadway composer Adam Guettel, auteur of two Broadway musicals, Light in the Piazza and Floyd Collins.

Guettel, like Strain's character, suffered a "rough patch" with cocaine and other controlled substances in mid career. Strain relishes the irony of his supercilious character and makes a funny portrayal memorable with a few too many sideways glances and pregnant pauses while lounging in his Indian kuti tunic.

The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall is sure to please those with a yen for Woody Allen repartee with a heavy dose of 21st-century-speak -- dude, like, whatever. But unlike some of Allen's loopiest works, Forman's has heart and his characters show real hurt, real love and real loss without the wisecracks.

Sure, the evening is awash with Allenesque asides and snap judgments, but at its core, it's about growing up and moving on when the realization comes that not everything works out as one wishes.

The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall is onstage through May 24. Tickets, $30-$55, are available by calling 800-494-TIXS or at www.boxofficetickets.com.

Artistic Director's Roundtables -- April 28, 7:30 p.m.: Screening of Woody Allen's classic Annie Hall, tickets $10; April 26: "Woody's Zeitgeist: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"; Sunday, May 3: "The Next Generation: Musical Theater in the New Millennium"; Thursday, May 7 and 14: A Musical Theater Cabaret showcasing local musical theater talent; Thursday, May 21: Cast talkback.

All roundtables are free with a performance ticket and begin shortly after the show ends.