Lynn Nottage’s new comedy couldn’t be more different from her last effort, the Pulitzer Prize winning, Rwanda-set Ruined. A satirical portrait of the subservient roles assigned to black performers in 1930s Hollywood--and decades afterwards, for that matter--By the Way, Meet Vera Stark features enough intelligence, wit and insight for two plays, which in fact this one essentially is. While its disparate halves never quite coalesce into a fully satisfying work, there’s still plenty to appreciate.

Sanaa Lathan delivers a standout performance in the title role of an African-American maid to a white movie star (Stephanie J. Block), who is up for the lead role as an octoroon Southern belle in a Gone With the Wind-style Hollywood epic. Vera is anxious to break into the movies as an actress herself, as is her caustic roommate Lottie (Kimberly Herbert Gregory), but the only roles open to them are, well, maids.

The evening’s first half is a screwball comedy ala George S. Kaufman, as Vera deals with her needy employer’s neuroses while working at a dinner party whose guests include a Jewish studio executive (David Garrison) and a pretentious director (Kevin Isola). Also showing up are Vera’s actress friend (Karen Olivo) who’s attempting to pass herself off as a Latina in order to land roles, and a smooth talking chauffeur (Daniel Breaker) with whom Vera’s enjoying a flirtation.

Act II takes a wildly divergent tone. Set four decades later, it revolves around a film symposium dedicated to Vera’s subsequent life and career, hosted by an unctuous intellectual (Breaker). As he and his fellow panelists, including a college professor (Gregory) and an radical poet (Olivo), pontificate about their subject, we see “clips” from a 1973 talk show appearance in which Vera, who went on to become a cheesy Las Vegas headliner, is reunited with her former employer and, as we learn, eventual cinematic co-star.

The evening is fairly bursting with wit, with a particular highlight being the expertly executed mock excerpt from “The Belle of New Orleans,” the film that made Vera a star. And Nottage’s skewering of academic pretensions is so hilariously spot-on that it almost feels like the real thing.

But the play’s satirical ideas, however thoughtful, are ultimately too scattershot and diffuse to sustain this full-length work. The warmth and insightful characterizations on display in the first half devolve into a less satisfying, sketch-like quality in the second.

The production itself is impeccable, from the ingenious staging by Jo Bonney that uses such clever devices as cinematic dissolves for transitions between scenes, to the sets and costumes that hilariously evoke the various periods in which the play is set.

And the acting is superb, from Lathan’s emotionally complex Vera to Block’s hilarious diva to the rest of the ensemble’s wildly divergent dual turns.

Second Stage Theatre, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422. www.2ST.com.