STAGE REVIEW : ‘Sitcom’: It Won’t Replace Bill Cosby

Many a comedy writer sweating out a pitch meeting at the network has said to himself, “There’s got to be a play here.”

Ron Bloomberg, who got his start with “All in the Family,” has committed one. It’s called “Sitcom,” it’s at the Melrose Theatre and it’s godawful.

Three or four rewrites down the line, though, it might be a play. Bloomberg knows how people talk at pitch meetings (“Now the arena of our story is . . .”) and how everybody looks to the boss for the first signal as to how to react.

We also admire Bloomberg’s cynicism. Here’s the process in writing sitcoms, his hero says. First, you do the show that they like. Then . . . you do the show that they like.

Then, presumably, you write that play. One problem with Bloomberg’s play is that the hero, a burned-out veteran of “F Troop,” comes off as a jerk. We’re supposed to see his crudeness with women as a cry for help, but it reads as bad manners and we’re surprised that the young woman in the story indulges it. Not these days.

Later, our hero responds to a janitor’s heart attack by jumping to the typewriter and getting busy with the scene he has been avoiding all day. Again, we’re supposed to smile at what a naughty little boy he’s being. Actually, we’re thinking about the guy on the floor.

The character is on the way to recovery in the next scene, of course. Bloomberg will dabble in black humor, but, hey--we’re just having fun up here. It’s a habit that one gets into in writing sitcoms, but in a full-length play it looks like a way of avoiding the issue. Is the writer a monster or not?

The avoidance goes so far that the story may not be really happening at all: Maybe the writer is sitting in his office with his feet up, fantasizing. That would explain why the actors in the sitcom-within-the-sitcom are spoofs of Cosby, Michael J. Fox and Roseanne.

Or maybe this was just a cute device thrown in by the director, originally Al Morgenstern, now Bloomberg himself. Bloomberg also plays the writer, from the head down, which is probably not the way to go about it. A wary character performed warily leaves an audience very little to go on.

Noelle Nichols is the girl who helps him with his typing. (Nobody in this play has heard about the word processor.) She’s game, but not totally persuaded by the role, and therefore not totally persuasive in it.

The best acting comes from the network boys at the pitch meeting, friendly as hell, but ready to hate the idea on sight. Howard Schechter is especially good as the boss, with Larry Covan and Scott Weintraub as his more craven associates, and Fran Montano as the resident s.o.b.

Raymond Oliver (Coz), Bernadine Lazer (Roseanne) and Chris Jordan (Michael J.) are funny in their respective cameos, and John Camponera is chilling as the fellow who warms up the audience before they start taping the pilot--a sequence where Bloomberg finally lets the morons who make and watch TV have it. As Francis Bacon said, it’s wonderful how anger improves a man’s style.

Plays Thursdays-Sundays at 8 p.m. Closes Aug. 20. 733 Seward St. Tickets $15; (213) 466-1767.