For Romance as a Game, Heart Gets in the Way.

SAN DIEGO -- The mushrooming of reality television and its lunatic subgenres might seem an unpromising subject for satire. How can you spoof a phenomenon that has metastasized so quickly that late-night comics have mostly left it behind as barren turf? ''Nobody Loves You,'' a delightful chamber musical having its premiere here at the Old Globe Theater, confounds expectations with its verve and ingenuity in poking silly fun at the absurdities of the crass, malice-riddled and embarrassingly addictive shows in which common folk are given a chance to grab the fleeting celebrity spotlight and win love, money or, best of all, a spinoff. To survive and thrive they must outdo the competition in parading their bleeding hearts and histories of dysfunction before a disgusted but obsessed audience. (You know who you are -- er, I mean, we know who we are.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]