‘Me Too’: Life, love and the Big C

For anyone in the audience at “Me Too” who believes that love is “all dopamine, all the time,” the idealistic protagonist’s discovery to the contrary may come as a revelation. For those with a little more life experience, Mark Goffman’s heartfelt but clumsy new drama will more likely underscore its inability to deal compellingly with the weighty subjects it tackles -- relationships, commitment, and coping with life-threatening illness.

Goffman, a former writer for “The West Wing,” explores complex emotional issues with the heavy-handedness of that show’s policy wonks at their most polemic. “Me Too” traces the odyssey of Andrew (Jeremy Glazer), a naive, headstrong guy who, against the advice of his doctor/friend Geoff (Greg Pitts), refuses to medicate away his romanticism. Andrew bounces from one hopeless infatuation to the next; like a latter-day Romeo, he’s in the throes of his latest when he meets The One -- Lucy (Danica McKellar) -- via her MySpace profile. Before you can say “callow, lovesick youth” he’s enshrined her on a pedestal.

Only problem: Lucy is also gravely ill, though McKellar is certainly the perkiest, most adorable cancer victim you could ever hope to meet.

Andrew displays saintly self-sacrifice helping Lucy in her battle, but he ingratiates himself early on with a terrible lie that predictably backfires in the second act. Zeke Rettman’s uninspired staging doesn’t help the awkward narrative construction.

The theatrical equivalent of comfort food, “Me Too” tries to assert the role love can play in the healing process, but it comes across as wishful thinking elevated to pseudo-scientific fact -- and wholly inadequate to the realities of helping a loved one through a serious illness.

“Me Too,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2nd floor, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 25. $23-28. (323) 960-7745 or www.plays411.com/metoo. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.