'Erma Bombeck: At Wit's End,' Now at Cleveland Play House, Does Little Justice to the Writer's Life

Pam Sherman in “Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End.” Credit: Photo by Roger Mastroianni.

This will be a short review of a short show. The show is Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End at the Cleveland Play House and it’s an hour long.

Since Erma Bombeck was a humor columnist in the last century, you might surmise that the length of the show is reflective of the idea that brevity is the soul of wit. But that would not be entirely accurate in this case.

Written by Allison Engel and Margaret Engel, this play collects scraps of Ms. Bombeck’s formidable wit regarding her suburban life on the mean streets of Dayton, Ohio. Those blurbs are then loosely tacked onto various topics including: Suburban Life, Being a Housewife, Motherhood, Being a Bad Cook, etc.

The assemblage created by the Engels manages to highlight some of Bombeck’s better gags (on Regrets: “Think of all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”) But those are surrounded by many more supposed laugh lines that have not aged well or were never that amusing to begin with. The Engels even resort to having the performer read the titles of Bombeck’s books, to grab a titter or two.

While the material is presented in a roughly chronological format, it feels more like a stand-up routine that needs a serious punch-up. The jokes that once worked well on the printed page are less boffo when linked together at random like lackadaisical circus elephants.

There are potential moments of drama in this narrative, including Bombeck’s diagnosis of breast cancer and her recruitment into the battle for the doomed Equal Rights Amendment in the early ’70s. But presented with the stuff of emotion and commitment, the playwrights skim right over most of it and hurry back to reciting some more clips from the Bombeck ouvre.

As the sole performer, Pam Sherman does a workmanlike job of delivering the words. But she never enlivens her presentation with anything resembling a burst of spontaneity. Sherman has played this role since 2017 at various theaters, and at this point it feels a bit shopworn and familiar.

Director Mark Cuddy, who is the CPH interim artistic director, doesn’t seem to lend a hand when things go flat—especially in a couple instances when Sherman has some awkward, one-sided dialog with unseen characters, including her family and a door-to-door salesman.

It would have been wonderful if the playwrights had spent the time and effort to really dive into this remarkable woman’s life and explore what made her tick, instead of just pulling out the laugh lines. Because Bombeck was a truly gifted humorist who paved the way for other women who felt the need to share a female perspective. And God knows we need that now more than ever, in a world that has gotten substantially nastier towards women and their rights.

Suburban Outlaw® production of Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End
Through August 20 at Cleveland Play House, Playhouse Square, Outcalt Theatre, 1407 Euclid Ave., clevelandplayhouse.com, 216-241-6000.

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