Arlen’s Powerful Singing Can’t Save His Weakly Written ‘VIII’

Someone should put together a production of “Camelot” for Steeve Arlen, immediately. Playing King Arthur might be just the antidote for what ails this singing actor. I make my diagnosis after having seen “VIII,” a one-man show on the life of King Henry VIII, written by and starring Arlen.

Arlen possesses both the strapping presence of a former matinee idol as well as a sonorous voice, a powerful instrument. In the course of the 90-minute playlet at the Gene Bua Acting for Life Theater in Burbank, Arlen sings 12 numbers, songs he co-wrote with Donald Eugster--songs that sound suspiciously like the ones Lerner and Loewe wrote for “Camelot,” when they don’t sound like “Man of La Mancha.”

The music is all recorded, piped in from speakers. “VIII” should be subtitled “The Karaoke Musical.”

The show begins with Arlen striding through the tiny auditorium to the tiny stage, where he appears to be discombobulated. Henry thinks he might be dead, in some kind of purgatory. He barks at individual audience members to tell him who they are and what they’re doing there. This is indeed hard to answer.

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Jeff Cohen directs as if the story had a shape to it, shading passages with lighting and tension to signal climactic moments. But every event in fact carries the same dramatic weight. While Arlen has the booming voice of a mighty raconteur, he has no sense of dramatic arc. Whenever he meets a future wife, he says her name, takes a deep breath, then says her name again. Jane Seymour. Sigh. Jane Seymour. Catherine Howard. Sigh. Catherine Howard. Inevitably, there is a generic song about the woman being “my four seasons all rolled into one” or “a sloe black starling / my dear, my darling.” Then, the sad outcome.

Henry’s continual need for divorce and his personal war with the pope is summed up in a vaudeville number, by way of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” Snapping his fingers to the jazzy tune called “Cromwell’s Report,” Arlen croons that “there was something rotten / blowin’ in from Rome.”

By the end of the evening, after he’s beheaded wife No. 5, Henry is on the ground, upset. Arlen raises himself up to sing an “inspirational” anthem--arms outstretched--called “Broken Wings.” In this song we learn that griffins cannot fly on broken wings, and that Henry has dreams that cannot live but will not die. “Dare I learn to fly on broken wings?” he asks plaintively.

But who cares if this murderous king learns to fly on broken wings? We have no idea what he’s learned or where he’s headed or why, even, we’re hearing the familiar story again.

Nor do we return to the purgatorial state that begins the show. Arlen simply ends by doing another chorus, full voice, arms outstretched, of “Broken Wings.” He seems less a king in search of an answer than an actor in need of a writer.

* “VIII,” Gene Bua Acting for Life Theater, 3435 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 7 p.m. $25. (818) 789-8499. Running time: 90 minutes.