Looped
Arena Stage at the Lincoln Theatreby Gina Guglielmo
Valerie Harper is undoubtedly a fine actress as her appearances as Rhoda Morgestern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in the 70's and in her spin-off hit, "Rhoda," attest. In this era of actors channeling the famous viz. Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Etta James, even Richard M. Nixon, it is no biggie that Tallulah Bankhead should join the list: I mean, the woman was notorious for her brash candor and train wreck lifestyle.
Harper's resemblance to the fog-horn voiced star of screen and stage was, with the help of makeup and a perfect wig, uncanny. The walk, the voice, the obscenity of her idiom are all faithfully replicated in this comedy by Matthew Lombardo which recreates an episode late in Tallulah's life during a rerecording (or looping) of a single sentence from the film "Die, Die, My Darling in a LA recording studio. So unfocused was the actress, it took eight hours for her to drawl, "And so Patricia, as I was saying . . ."
Why the prolonged agony? Well the majority of theater goers come to the play to witness Bankhead's epic boozing, drug addiction and erratic/ erotic behavior. Indeed the pun is legitimate: she smokes, swills Scotch and even snorts cocaine throughout the play, goes off on all sorts of wild tangents: hence a looped lady doing a looping.
She is beyond outrageous: Madonna is a postulant in a convent compared to this southern belle turned foul-mouthed virago. May I state for the record that Drama Queen's last name is not Victoria, which gives some idea of her venomous but rather creative diatribes. The audience howled appreciatively at each shockeroo.
Born in Huntsville, Alabama into a prestigious political family (her father was Speaker of the House; her grandfather was a Senator),Tallulah's life started out tragically. Her mother died three months after delivering her second daughter, and according to Tallulah, her father blamed her brutally. At first a homely, pudgy child, she blossomed into a beauty but discovered drugs and promiscuous sex in her teens. Despite this baggage, she broke into Broadway and then Hollywood making dozens of movies. The best of the lot was her portrayal of a famous actress in "Lifeboat". She also spent eight very successful years on the London Stage and even hosted her own radio show.
As Looped begins, a film editor named Danny Miller (Jay Goede) bursts into the sound studio looking for the missing actress. Eventually she stumbles in while giving the verbal finger to the entire L.A. area. Her patter is shocking not because we never hear this language but because La Bankhead's vocabulary was as salacious well before George Carlin, South Park and Jon Stewart made potty talk rather ho-hum. She used her prurient put-downs to insult, attack, and demean this Danny whom she had barely met, coming across as a miserable human being who never found or learned to like herself. Somehow, Harper evokes pity for her too.
Some of the anecdotes that fill out her non-stop barrage are shocking but likely true: Gary Cooper, good ole' Coop of High Noon, gave her the clap which nearly killed her and rendered her barren. Douglas Fairbanks was a sexual lightweight and so was his wife, Joan Crawford. Oh, she spares no one: Tennessee Williams, Jessica Tandy, her equally bizarre sister, Eugenia, and everyone from Harpo Marx to her hotel doorman who wants to "have it on" with her.
Cutting to the chase, Valerie Harper is a good actress; she did a fabulous imitation of Tallulah, the harridan, as she torments Danny into a tearful revelation about his homosexuality. It was at this point that the play finally fell off the cliff. First of all, drunk as she is throughout, according to the Post review, Tallulah did not abuse alcohol; she was a world-class drug addict and chain smoker, so I feel the playwright distorted the facts to make his character more infamous. Neither was she a great actress. She was, how well we know this type today: a Celebrity. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., her tragedy is not based on the reality of a flawed genius. When Harper does Blanche Dubois for Danny to prove she could really act, she made a rotten Blanche. It's unclear if the director Rob Ruggiero called for that, or was it that Harper could not muster her gifts to show Tallulah being great in this role? She is after all a comic actress and there is not a single funny bone in Blanche Dubois' body.
The whole idea of Danny jumping out of the closet after knowing Bankhead for half a day is preposterous. Why would this tormented man who had married and fathered a child and kept his deep, dark secret for his whole life confide in this sad broken-down shell of a woman, who morphs suddenly into a motivational speaker urging him to be free and express himself.
So "Looped" gets a B. The actors followed the script, but the play missed the "Lifeboat."
Looped runs through June 28 at the Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St.,
NW, Washington. Tickets are $25 to $74. Call 202-488-3300 or go to
arenastage.org.
