"It's the Housewives!" at the Whitefire Theater

First: sorry to my readers (if any) for the long recess. I have seen a number of plays and just didn’t get that kick in the pants to write about any of them.

Until now.

If I had a dollar for every missed opportunity in It’s the Housewives I would be able to ignore the current economic crisis. Then I would spend that money on a different show.

But to begin: It’s the Housewives –book by Hope Juber and Ellen Guylas, music by Hope Juber and her husband, Wings guitarist Laurence Juber—is a pop musical about the rise of a celebrated musical trio, The Housewives, made of (you guessed it) housewives, apparently based on a “comedy rock group” Ms. Juber had been involved with at one time. The story is told mostly as a big flashback, as one of the Housewives is recognized by her plumber and is cornered into telling the story of the band. The songs—all numbers performed for one reason or another by the trio—are ‘80s-style pop tunes with lyrics on topics like washing, ironing and childcare.

That said, there are oodles of fun directions this set up could take. You have the opportunity here to poke fun at the wide range of ‘80s pop musical styles. You have the opportunity to talk about the real and true nobility of being a stay-at-home mom. You have the opportunity to talk about how times changed to force middle-class families to abandon the single-earner life. You have the potential to parody any number of rock band break-up stories (a Yoko moves them apart, they all pursue solo careers, the drummer keeps exploding…). Unfortunately none of this is dealt with (apart from two songs—one in the style of Devo and one rap ala the Fresh Prince, easily the two most effective in the show) and what you end up with is two hours and one joke. Discounting rim-shot moments ruminating on cutting-edge targets such as Michael Jackson.

They sing at a PTA meeting, move up to a Laundromat, become famous and along the way have a little personal tension. But there’s no real arc to this story, it just moves in a straight line, giving us nothing to root for or even against. There is an attempt in Act II to bring some danger to their lives, as one of the Housewives is struck by an addiction to All My Children. Which she of course sings about (there are 18 songs in this show. There should have been 10.) but even then the dilemma is woefully weak and the lyrics so dated that even my theatre-going Second—an AMC nut for decades (yes, plural)—didn’t get them.

On top of this, the dialog clangs like ‘70s sit-com reject material, with weak puns based on cleaning product names, and dumb sexual innuendo based on cleaning product names. Not really surprising, I suppose, considering the book writers association with a number of ‘70s sit-coms, according to the long, long bios. The jokes are often set up, delivered and then explained. And the reacted to. The horse is crying mercy through most of this show.

Now, despite this, the three leads—Connie Dekker, Jamey Hood and Jayme Lake—have the talent to make the most of it, aided by a respectable supporting cast of Roger Cruz, Anthony DeSantis, Susan Mullen and (the sadly underused) Jed Alexander. Vince Cefalu is charming and effective as the plumber, out-acting the energetic but posy Terri Homberg-Olsen in the present-day scenes. They all make it just this side of bearable, as often does Kelly Ann Ford’s direction and Kay Cole’s fun choreography.

But this brings me to another big weakness of this show: there is mention of time passing, but no real consideration of it. The housewives gain success, go on tour, cut numerous CDs, get pregnant, have these kids and go on to have their own TV show. But along the way their children and husbands are almost never mentioned (one is a character), and the only time they are is when the women have strollers on stage or babies in their arms. So it seems as if the kids never age—as they are only dealt with repeatedly as infants. This is problem in itself, but for my money another huge hole in the commentary of motherhood: dealing with aging children. Or husbands, for that matter. Likewise, it seems they manage to accomplish all this while still in the ‘80s, as the musical styles don’t ever really change (other than become more generic as the show winds on). Nor really do the costuming or the references. And despite The Housewives enormous success, money and influence, it appears they still go home and do chores and complain about it. (And again: another missed opportunity: couldn’t they have gotten all this fame and fortune only to learn that they missed being “just housewives”? Hardly original, but least then there would be a point.)

A further issue: the sound design was awful. All the women were miked when they sang. Fine. But despite the fact that there were effects used on the voices from time to time, there never seemed to be any consideration of these effects to illuminate where they were singing—the Laundromat sounded the same as the TV show as the stadium tour. Except where there seemed to be something “funny” in an echo or whatever. Further, they were body-miked, but they sometimes had hand-held mikes on stage, only they weren’t practical. So when they walked away from hand-held mikes, they sounded the same…and the guy standing right in front of the same “live” mike two seconds later sounded like he was on a small stage in Sherman Oaks. Likewise, the Housewife telling the story in the present was miked while she talked PART of the time. Maybe there was a new sound man in the booth. In any case: lazy, sloppy sound.

But wait, as the commercial says, there’s more! The night I went started nearly 20-minutes late. The house was about 99% full (it’s amazing what heavy advertising can do, I guess), so by any standard this was insulting to those of us who bothered to show up on time. During the wait a parody of The Who’s landmark Tommy was played, with the lyrics swapped out to be about kids, cleaning products, etc. Quite funny for about 5 minutes, if you bothered to listen. After 10 it was wearing. After 20 you wanted to find Pete Townshend and ask him if he knew and could he please sue them to never do it again. So, basically it was a prefect preface for the evening. I hope they don’t do that every night. It’s cruel.

The final insult for me was the last number in the show, called “(Ain’t No) T.V. Housewife,” where the trio sings about how they’re real people and not those moms you see on T.V. …um…dammit! The things is, for two hours all we saw of these three women was just that: them being shallow, silly, often stupid representations of middle-class moms. Maybe that’s how they’re not T.V. housewives – the ones on T.V. are usually the bright ones in the family.

There were a few real laughs in the show. But even more yawns –and not just from me. It’s a cute idea, really, but a better skit or one-act than full-blown show. So, to borrow a phrasing likely to be found in this show: divorce yourself from “It’s the Housewives”.

Bottom line: C- …because the performers bring the score up.

Til next time!
HDSQ, Jr.