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

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.

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.

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. 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.

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