Venues
Events
MediaTheater
“Rhoda” Rocks as Tallulah
Looped theater review
Photo: Courtesy of Carol Rosegg
Valerie Harper, the Emmy winning actress best known as Rhoda from both the Mary Tyler Moore Show and her own spin-off program has shed her signature “New Yawk” accent and turned in a Tony Award-worthy performance as the outrageous, iconic actress Tallulah Bankhead in the new comedy Looped, a Shubert Organization production at the Lyceum Theater. Rounding out the quick-witted and slightly testy (not without good reason) three character cast are Broadway and television veterans Brian Hutchison and Michael Mulheren.
Based on a long, legendary day at a Hollywood recording studio in the summer of 1965, Looped concerns an attempt to get the easily distracted Tallulah to overdub or “loop” in Tinsel Town jargon, a single line of dialogue for what would be her final picture, prophetically titled, Die, Die My Darling. Tallulah is of course fashionably tardy, but eventually arrives in full diva regalia: fur coat, sunglasses, scarf, and red carpet ready gown. And apparently she has nothing better to do this sweltering afternoon than slowly torture, to the audience’s delight, her director Danny (Hutchison) and recording engineer Steve (Mulheren) with her need for frequent breaks for cigarettes, cocaine, bourbon, pills and whatever else may be in her seemingly bottomless purse. Since Tallulah’s tsetse fly-like attention span doesn’t exactly speed things along, it quickly becomes as clear as the glass in Steve’s audio booth above Adrian W. Jones’ impressive studio set that nobody’s going anyplace but loopy anytime soon.
Though capably assisted by her cast mates, and directed with both comedic flair and dramatic pause by Rob Ruggiero, Looped is clearly Valerie Harper’s vehicle and drive it she does–with raunchy relish thanks to Matthew Lombardo’s script that drops f-bombs and sexual innuendoes like peanut shells at a petting zoo. This Rhoda is clearly not ready for prime time.
Ms. Harper was reportedly nervous about how the script’s lewd and crude dialogue would be received, but judging by the packed house’s positive reactions, she has very little reason for concern. After all, to have toned down Tallulah’s cynical sarcasm and drunken sailor sass would have been a disservice to both Bankhead and the audience. Hey, we’re all adults here and judging by a few of the more mature faces in the crowd, some have been Bankhead fans since she starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat in 1944.
Meanwhile back in Los Angeles, the barbed bon mots between Tallulah and Danny fly fast, including zingers like, “What kind of doctor would prescribe that many pills?” “I don’t know it’s not my prescription.”
To be fair, Tallulah isn’t above poking fun at herself. Hell, she’ll apparently take all the pokes she can get (sorry, couldn’t resist) including, “I’m bi-sexual, buy me something and I’ll be sexual.,” The laughs come so fast you may want to get Looped again just to catch up on jokes missed the first time around.
Not content with putting just Danny and herself down, Tallulah engages in a “Who’s Who” of notable name dropping as well, including Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford of whose lesbian affair Tallulah found unsatisfactory because, “She kept getting out of bed to beat the children.” All the world it seems was Tallulah’s stage, and the men and women merely straight players for her drop dead drollness, which she could turn on or off depending on her mood and the quickness with which her cigarette was lit and bourbon refilled. No scotch, unless that’s all you’ve got.
Looped and its juicy joyride only slows down briefly in the second act when Tallulah and Danny attempt to psycho-analyze each other as he tries to find out why she chose to put her talent aside and become both the embodiment of excess and a caricature of herself. “We always give the people what they want” is her easy excuse before revealing a peek into her well-protected, nicotine-stained heart. In turn, Tallulah picks at the seams of the seemingly straight laced, Mad Men-attired Danny until he confesses the deep secret he’s been keeping closeted (barely) for 15 years. Eventually, the two stand on either side of the stage screaming at each other until one breaks down. But mercifully, the dueling hissy fits pass and they can finally get down to the recording at hand in time for Steve to take his son out to the ball game. Koufax is pitching after all.
To Tallulah’s claim that half the men in her life wanted to f- her and the other half wanted to be her, now there’s a third option of watching Valerie Harper portray her for a fast moving couple hours, including a riveting scene wherein Ms Harper recreates Bankhead as Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire, a part Tallulah claims Tennessee Williams wrote just for her but she passed on in fear that Blanche’s character struck a little too close to home. Sadly, later in her career when Tallulah did feel up to the material, the crowds were more interested in Bankhead as campy caricature rather than a top-tier actress in the part she was born to play.
And so a case of credit, kudos and whiskey is due to all involved in bringing Looped and it’s laughing, unflinching and ultimately loving production to life. Tallulah’s legend lives on, only now in a slightly more forgiving light. As it turns out, to paraphrase Tennessee Williams, Tallulah could “rely on the kindness of strangers” after all.