Review

“Me Too”

Stella Adler Theatre, Hollywood

Through June 25

It’s hard to be against the fight for a cure for
cancer.

It’s seemingly such a safe cause to support that a new
theater production has tackled the subject in “Me Too,”
a two-act “dramedy” about the difficulties of falling
in love with someone who has cancer, by Room 9 Entertainment
(“Thank You for Smoking”).

Written by Mark Goffman and directed by Zeke Rettman, the story
in “Me Too” takes place during the last 18 weeks of one
character’s fight against cancer.

“Me Too,” playing at the Stella Adler Theatre in
Hollywood through June 25, starts out with Andrew (played by Jeremy
Glazer), a soft drink developer, scouring MySpace for yet another
girl to fall in love with. His buddy Geoff, a smart-mouthed doctor
(Greg Pitts) comes across Lucy (Danica McKellar), a somewhat
cynical high school chemistry teacher who is on the dating market
despite having cancer.

After Lucy and Andrew meet, seeming to have a lot in common,
Lucy springs the bad news to Andrew about her cancer. He responds
by saying, “Me too!”

But he doesn’t.

From here, “Me Too” develops into a sometimes
mind-numbing, sometimes gut-busting, sometimes heart-wrenching
picture of love that turns against itself.

If for nothing else, many audiences will watch this play for two
reasons ““ Winnie Cooper from “The Wonder Years”
(McKellar) and the “O-face” guy from “Office
Space” (Pitts), both of whom put on convincing
performances.

McKellar ““ who also happened to graduate summa cum laude
in mathematics from UCLA and achieved the rare honor of proving a
theory now named after her ““ drives her character with
powerfully convincing dramatic acting after the second act starts.
The same can be said of Glazer.

During the first act, however, Pitts seems to be the only one
convinced of his own comedic delivery and seems to have the most
complex character in Geoff.

Geoff, who has his own broken marriage to deal with, is funny,
calm, smart, wise and caring ““ all traits his wife Janet
(Meeghan Holaway) would probably have liked to see.

While the dynamic between the married couple seems less like a
marriage on the rocks and more like two buddies not quite sure if
they like the couch they’re sitting on, the real drama
ultimately revolves around Andrew and Lucy.

The space between these two is filled with an unbreakable
tension. And surprisingly, this tension makes “Me Too”
a convincing comedy.

While the characters and dialogue often seem respectively like
the TV shows “Friends” and “Gilmore Girls,”
with cancer, this is Goffman’s first foray into the world of
writing for theater.

He has previously written for “The West Wing,” so
“Me Too” brings this television-savvy sensibility to
his play’s humor. This humor is used as a hook to draw the
audience into a devastatingly common problem.

However, cancer is a safe problem to address, seeing as how, as
of yet, it’s an epidemic without social class, political
party or religious affiliation. This makes “Me Too”
almost universally comprehensible.

But compare it to the musical “Rent,” which deals
with the issue of AIDS, and “Me Too” is mild.

The fight to beat cancer, no matter how obviously virtuous it
may be, isn’t absolutely exploited.

Instead, it acts as an extended metaphor throughout the play
about how a person’s passions or love can turn against their
possessor.

Andrew sums up this theme best when he looks into a mirror, and
right before he takes Lucy’s medicine in order to understand
her better, he says, “What does it feel like to have your
insides turn against you?”

““ Justin Bilow

E-mail Bilow at [email protected].