[NEohioPAL] Berko review: AN EVENING WITH LUCILLE BALL @ 14TH STREET THEATRE

[Roy Berko]

Lucille Ball flounders at 14th Street Theatre

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--
Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News Times--Olmsted-Fairview 
Times

--coolcleveland.com—

AN EVENING WITH LUCILLE BALL:  THANK YOU FOR ASKING, which is now on stage at 
the 14th Street Theatre, is billed as “a touching, funny and uplifting one-woman 
play.”  Yes, is it a one-woman show.  Unfortunately, it not touching, funny or 
uplifting.  

I am confounded as to how Suzanne LaRusch (who is the one-woman in the show) and 
Lucie Arnaz (Lucille Ball’s daughter), could take the life and material of one 
of the funniest women in television history, and make it into such a boring and 
contrived production.

I LOVE LUCY is an iconic piece of U.S. cultural folklore.  Lucille Ball is an 
iconic personage of U.S. cultural folklore.  If LaRusch and Arnaz wanted to give 
us the Lucy we know and love, inserting snippets from the famous wine stomping 
and candy stuffing scenes and television interviews of the great woman, within 
the historical life information, might have made for a happy evening of 
nostalgia.  Instead, the authors developed a contrived question-and-answer 
interview scheme, in which recorded voices of so-called audience members asked 
questions that most often got flat, uninteresting bits of information in 
response from LaRusch (whoops, Lucy).   

Yes, LaRusch batted her eyes and pursed her Lucy lips, but there was little 
connection to the audience.  Her attempts to sing Boy With a Bugle from the 
Ball’s negatively reviewed film, MAME, and Hey Look Me Over, from her 
short-lived Broadway production of WILDCAT, only stressed the performer’s poor 
singing abilities.  (Was this her voice or was she trying to mock the vocally 
challenged Ball?) 

Yes, there were “never-before-heard personal recollections about her life,” but 
that alone does not a fascinating or entertaining piece of theatre make.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  AN EVENING WITH LUCILLE BALL was a poorly conceived, 
contrived and tedious evening of theatre.  ‘Nuff said.

For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to www.playhousesquare.org.
 
Roy Berko's blog, which contains theatre and dance reviews from 2001 through 
2011, as well as his consulting and publications information, can be found at 
http://royberko.info.  His reviews can also be found on www.coolcleveland.com 
and www.NeOHIOpal