STAGE REVIEW : A Valentine to Bittersweet Love in Westwood

“One Enchanted Evening” at the Westwood Playhouse has George Ball and Amanda McBroom singing some of their favorite love songs, including the one by the Gershwin brothers suggesting that most love songs are a lot of blah-blah-blah.

McBroom and Ball have tried to steer clear of those. They have also avoided songs about starry-eyed love. Mainly these are ballads of experience. When Ball sings Randy Newman’s “Marie,” Marie is gone. This is what he should have said to her.

Likewise, McBroom’s “My Favorite Year” is lightly dusted with regret. A perfect year, but you only get one of them. And if you really examined it, maybe it wasn’t so perfect.

Being married, Ball and McBroom also tackle married-type love, as in Stephen Sondheim’s “The Little Things You Do Together” from “Company”--the neighbors you annoy together, children you destroy together. Ah, yes. Ah, well. Kiss-kiss.

The show is divided between old songs, middle-aged ones and new ones, many written by McBroom. Except for “My Favorite Year,” a beauty, the new songs don’t leave the impression that the old ones do. McBroom spins a spotless “It Never Entered My Mind” and Ball sings “Some Enchanted Evening” as if he’s thinking about the words rather than the sound of his voice, which is considerable.

McBroom’s voice is also special. She can sing country (most of her own songs have that flavor) and she can sing city, and you believe her, even when the lyric is only a few steps up from blah-blah-blah.

Concentration is part of it. Ball shares that discipline, and when he puts his mind on Jacques Brel’s “Mathilde” or Sondheim’s “Being Alive,” the results are fierce. These are singing actors, not merely singers, which makes the show more than a concert.

That being true, they need a director. Not a musical director--Bill Elliott and Cathy Rubbico have those duties well in hand. But as a theater piece, “One Enchanted Evening” needs focusing and thinking about.

For example: In a show devoted to love songs, doesn’t it look a little strange for one partner to leave the other partner to entertain the audience, while he or she disappears backstage?

McBroom can say that she’s changing into a new dress, but what’s Ball’s excuse? We’d feel a bit chilled to attend a party where the host kept going out to the garage to work on his car, and that was slightly the effect at the Westwood on Tuesday night.

The selection of songs could also be sharpened. Rather than a pleasant potpourri of old and new material, “One Enchanted Evening” could actually find a shape--could, for example, trace the development of a relationship, simply in the arrangement of its songs. It’s exciting to think what these performers could do with a two-person revue that described a real dramatic arc, rather than simply proceeding from number to number.

On the other hand, after their recent dual stint in “Lies and Legends” and “Jacques Brel Is. . .” maybe McBroom and Ball just want to relax with this show. That’s allowed. But it’s not the way to create memorable musical theater. They’ll be at the Westwood Playhouse (10866 Le Conte Ave.) through --appropriately--Valentine’s Day. Information: (213) 208-5454 or (213) 410-1062.