STAGE REVIEW : ‘Love and Shrimp’: Musical Bites of Judith Viorst Humor

Fans of humorist Judith Viorst already know that she is audience-specific. Her target is the WAMMMMs: those unsung throngs of White, Affluent, Middle-class, Middle-aged, Married Mothers.

Viorst’s several books have addressed themselves to life changes seen from that perspective, virtually decade by decade. Viorst has her fans. And now her show, once more ponderously known as “Love & Guilt & the Meaning of Life” (the title of one of her books) is back under a catchier name: “Love and Shrimp,” at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.

It’s the right address for the material. This concert staging of Viorst words set to music by Shelly Markham (at the piano) had a trial run at the Pasadena Playhouse in June, 1990. Two of the same performers--Eileen Barnett and Bonnie Franklin--are back with it at the Canon; the third, Mariette Hartley, replaces Gretchen Wyler.

But the format appears to be unchanged: The three performers sit on stools in front of music stands equipped with microphones. They talk and sing. And they never get up.

That, in the long run, is an odd idea. Confining to the point of being awkward. Director Marilyn Shapiro gets limited mileage out of Franklin doing a tap dance without leaving her seat or the already sensuous-looking Hartley shimmying in place to show us what a “Sensuous Woman” she can become if she sets her mind to it.

What happened to running wild, cutting loose and roaming free?

Not here, not now. This is a show for the comfortable and sedate. It spoon-feeds its oblique bittersweetness like chicken soup to audiences of like milieu and mind. And why not? Aren’t WAMMMMs entitled?

Of course they are. And Viorst’s orgy of Angst and reminiscence even hits the bull’s-eye on occasion. Take the threesome’s raucous “Money,” or the Material Girl grows older. Take Hartley’s hilarious “So My Husband and I,” which addresses the universal problem of husbands who’d rather roam the Sahara Desert without water through eternity than stop the car and ask for directions.

Take Franklin wondering aloud “Did I Do Something Wrong” about raising that upstanding lawyer son of hers who shrinks away ever so slightly when she approaches. Or Barnett’s exquisite versions of “The Answer Is Yes” (the question was do you love me) and “First Baby,” a delicate remembrance of the surprise and joy of bonding with that first child--perhaps the most indelible, and indelibly sung, of the songs in this collection.

But WAMMMMs are also entitled to better than a lot of what they get: a series of wry homilies about lost youth (“This morning I was 17 and it’s good night ladies already”), sex vs. love, ideals vs. comfort, face lift or no face lift.

That is the question? It’s not worth asking--and that’s the problem with the show. It’s no deeper or richer than Hallmark Card sound bites set to music. This is easy-listening theater. Given the already narrow range of Viorst’s focus and humor, and those chair-bound performers, “Love and Shrimp” will presumably appeal only to the women it targets. And not all of them.

* “Love and Shrimp,” Canon Theatre, 205 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills. Mondays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 1 p.m. Ends Feb. 27. $25; (310) 247-8280). Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.