Review: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD at Best Medicine Rep

What are the odds of two cartoonists submitting to the New Yorker both living in Cleveland? Or that one was hired to be the caretaker of the other? 

It happens in Ken Levine’s new comedy “Back to the Drawing Board,” getting its world premiere though the plucky Best Medicine Rep, operating in a second story strip mall on the Rockville Pike in a space operated by the Adventure Theatre MTC Academy. 

Of the two, one is a retiree who has been submitting cartoons unsuccessfully for 27 years, in hopes of getting the attention of a long lost love. The other has sold 10 cartoons to the magazine in recent years, but takes a job as caretaker she’s totally unqualified for because she needs the gig. 

Joining forces doesn’t mean they exactly help each other in their cartoon efforts, But they do use the panels to communicate their styles of humor — and their drawings are projected on the wall as they do so. They quickly develop a screwball patter between them that’s sharp and witty as a solid sitcom, but often just as bereft of naturalism or feel in persuit of the constant set-up / pay-off. .

Levine knows this territory well — he’s a longtime sitcom writer  for shows like “M*A*S*H,” "Frasier," and two memorable episodes of “The Simpsons.” He won an Emmy for work on “Cheers.” He obviously lives and breathes sitcom patter.

And so the give and take can be fast and funny between John Morogiello as the crusty would-be cartoonist Keith, and Leah Eden Chiaverini as his formidable foil from a younger generation. 

The playwright uses a couple of other skills from his resume in the play as well, throwing in a lot of baseball lore in expressing a shared love for the Cleveland Indians and the infield fly rule, since Levine once did play-by-play for the Orioles, Mariners and Padres. 

And yes, Levine is a current contributing cartoonist for The New Yorker himself. As such, he not only has the knowledge of the field required, he also has the drawing ability. And his sketchy animal drawings that sub for Keith’s work in are in contrast to the sleek lines of Tara’s work (provided by another New Yorker cartoonist, Lynn Hsu). 

As in a sitcom, after about 22 minutes of the best comic exchanges, it may be time to turn the channel. But this is a play, so there are second and third acts and even an intermission that start to make it seem like things are stretching out -- as if we’ve binged one too many episodes. 

A side plot of Tara’s ambition to be a standup comic seems underdeveloped. And when she suddenly comes up with his long lost girlfriend (Kari Luther), it’s almost like we skipped an episode - we never knew she had been doing some online sleuthing. Their getting together is something that would have been saved to the second or third season of a sitcom. And while the romantic connection between the older couple has its hiccups, as in any contemporary rom-com, it becomes obvious they should ultimately end up together one way or another. 

There’s some weird blocking in Stan Levin’s direction — the twosome in the first scenes talk a little too closely together; Keith collapses by becoming stiff as a board. Perhaps there’s just very little room to move in the purposely bland set (also by Levin), that’s not so different from the office furniture in the rest of the commercial space. 

The worst aspect overall may be the lighting — which is also credited to the lead actor Morogiello. When the cartoon projections come up, the other lights go down unnecessarily amid the constant hum  of the projector throughout (Morogiello designed the lights, but they may be operated by AI for all the feel it had). 

There’s laughs and some heart in “Back to the Drawing Board” but it almost seems better suited for a TV pilot.

Running time: About 90 minutes, plus one 10-minute intermission. 

Photo credit: Leah Eden Chiaverini, Kari Luther and John Morogiello in “Back to the Drawing Board.” Photo by Elizabeth Kemmerer.