When Desi Arnaz performed “Babalu” on “I Love Lucy,” it was an exercise in sheer head-tossing, tie-loosening, id-releasing exuberance. That same number in “I Love Lucy Live On Stage,” despite the charm and vocal chops of Euriamis Losada as Desi/Ricky Ricardo, feels like a dress rehearsal for a floor show at a Cuban chain restaurant.
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That’s the problem throughout this wan, crowd-pleasing exercise in Lucy nostalgia, here in an Equity production making a short touring stop at the Bank of America Theatre. It already played the Broadway Playhouse with a different cast, including several Chicago performers, in a longer run in fall of 2012. I missed that outing, but the larger venue doesn’t do much to create the “studio audience” intimacy that the creators are going for. (Director Rick Sparks and Kim Flagg adapted and added to the material from the original teleplays by Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr.)
The premise is that we’re watching back-to-back tapings of two classic “I Love Lucy” episodes, both focused on Lucy’s desperate attempts to get onstage herself. In “The Benefit,” she gets Ricky to play a gig at Ethel’s women’s club — provided she also gets to sing. In “Lucy Gets Her Eyes Examined,” her jitterbugging audition for a producer pal of Ricky’s at the club goes awry when eyedrops render her nearly blind.
In between, we get banter and information about the television process from the emcee, Maury Jasper (an ingratiating Mark Christopher Tracy); songs from “The Crystaltone Singers”; era-appropriate commercials for Brylcreem and Alka-Seltzer; and bits of “unscripted” business from the cast. Example: Thea Brooks’ Lucy and Lori Hammel’s Ethel go up on lines, causing Kevin Remington’s William Frawley/Fred Mertz to suggest a trip to the bar. (A locale reputedly all-too-familiar to the real Frawley.)
The interstitial material is where the meat of this show should be — but like Losada’s overly safe “Babalu,” that’s where it mostly falters. Without it, we’re just watching karaoke Lucy. Frankly, Brooks too often misses the mark as the lovable redhead, mostly delivering a by-the-numbers impersonation devoid of the nuances that Lucille Ball at her most exaggerated could suggest. Not even the fabulous ’50s frocks (designed by Shon LeBlanc and Kelly Bailey) can make up for the lack of interior spark in the performances.
A scene early on in which the “real” Lucy and Desi engage in pre-show banter (not unlike what Sonny and Cher would do on camera many years later) suggests the smart cookie behind the stagestruck hausfrau. That hausfrau has a doppelganger in the form of an “audience” member — Mrs. Birdie Mae Figg from Oklahoma, who shares the stage with a real audience member during a Lucy trivia quiz. Denise Moses kills as the fluttery Mrs. Figg, and also shines as “Speedy” in the Alka-Seltzer commercial and as one of the singing “Pleasant Peasants” in “The Benefit.”
But it’s always a sign of trouble when a supporting player is more interesting to watch than the character whose name is on the marquee. “I Love Lucy Live On Stage” isn’t meant to be a tell-all behind-the-scenes story. But if you’re going to open the lens on that world, we need to see more than faint flickers of the originals.
2 STARS
When: Through Sunday
Where: Bank of America Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: $25-$85 at 800-775-2000 and broadwayinchicago.com