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By Matt Kelley | Dec 4, 2024

Last night marked the Iowa premiere of a one-woman play about Erma Bombeck, a humorist who won wide fame for her column that described life in the Midwestern suburbs and was carried in more than 900 newspapers.

The playwrights who crafted the performance are twin sisters, Allison and Peggy Engel, who both have many Iowa ties. Allison Engel emphasizes, it’s a play and not a stand-up act.
“There are a lot of funny things in it, that’s for sure, because she was a well-known humorist, and she just was also a very funny person in person,” Allison Engel says, “but the play tells about her remarkable life and how she really started writing at age 37 and became the most syndicated columnist in America.”

Bombeck wrote three columns a week and 16 best-selling books, becoming extremely popular throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. The play, “Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End,” had decades of copy from which to draw and the sisters agree, they had to leave out a lot of great lines, but those they kept in are gems.

“This play is punchy, it’s funny, it’s poignant, it’s sad, it’s happy,” Peggy Engel says, “and we’re really pleased with — we have a wonderful actress named Pam Sherman who takes us through her life in all its hilarity.”

In addition to the newspaper columns and best-selling books, Bombeck was said to be one of Johnny Carson’s favorite “Tonight Show” guests, and she was also a regular correspondent on “Good Morning, America,” so multiple generations adored her humor and charm.

“She told the truth about what it was really like to live in a household,” Allison Engel says. “People romanticized what a suburban life was like after World War Two, the housewife in pearls and heels and vacuuming — and Erma Bombeck told it how it really was, and she was very funny, but people recognized the humanity.”

While Bombeck died in 1996, five days after submitting what became her final column, the Engels say her wisdom and her wit is still very much alive for the modern audience.

“We’re really so cheered by the fact that so many families are going together, daughters taking moms, fathers taking their sisters, because we’ve seen them exchanging knowing glances in the performances,” Peggy Engel says, “because what they’re seeing on stage really played out in their own lives.”

Among their many credits, Peggy Engel is a former reporter for the Des Moines Register and the Washington Post, who now directs the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and was managing editor of the Newseum. Allison Engel was a reporter for the Des Moines Tribune, among other papers, and was a speechwriter for former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson.

“Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End” is playing at the Temple Theater of the Des Moines Civic Center through December 21st.

Hear Matt Kelley’s full 8-minute interview with the Engel sisters below: