NEW YORK

"VALERIE HARPER GIVES AN ENJOYABLY BIG, BLUSTERY PERFORMANCE, NAILING EVERY LAST LAUGH!"

A previously unknown Tallulah Bankhead — the fabulous monster as crackerjack comic — is revealed to the world in Matthew Lombardo’s play “Looped,” which stars Valerie Harper as that troubled actress in her twilight moments. As she lurches around the recording studio where the play is set in 1965, unable to finish the last bit of work on what will prove to be her final film, Tallulah barks out punch lines with the skill of a stand-up comic with decades of Borscht Belt experience, despite the half-bottle of Scotch flowing through her veins.

Even the estimable wisecracker Joan Rivers might want to hustle down to the Lyceum Theater, where the show opened on Broadway on Sunday night, to pick up a few pointers.
-The New York Times

"VALERIE HARPER HAS A FEROCIOUS SENSE OF COMIC TIMING AND KNOWS HOW TO MAKE AN ENTRANCE! FOUR-LETTER WORDS FLY AND SO DO THE LAUGHS!"

Wearing a full-length fur coat, a long blue scarf, a chic violet dress and sunglasses, she staggers into a recording studio. Four-letter words fly. And so do the laughs. But then, what did you expect?

Tallulah Bankhead always knew how to make an entrance. And so does Valerie Harper, who plays the flamboyant actress in "Looped," a fictional recreation of one of Bankhead's less celebrated moments - the re-recording of some botched dialogue from her last film, a campy 1965 horror fest called "Die! Die! My Darling!"

Not really a one-woman show, the comedy is more of a battle between Bankhead and an agitated film editor named Danny (Brian Hutchison), who's forced to supervise the re-looping.

Between their verbal fisticuffs, bits and pieces of Bankhead's life emerge. These details are accompanied by some choice bits of Bankhead repartee, mostly of the naughty variety, especially after the lady has had a little scotch (actually, a lot of scotch) and done a little coke.

In portraying Bankhead, Harper effectively submerges the iconic Rhoda Morgenstern, her character from television's "Rhoda" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Here, her voice is gravelly and coal-mine deep. And she has a ferocious sense of comic timing that punches up the sexual one-liners Lombardo sprinkles throughout the play.

Harper even looks a bit like Bankhead, only prettier, thanks to the stylish costume designs of William Ivey Long and the wig artistry of Charles LaPointe. Bankhead, who died in 1968, was a personality, and despite a few good stage roles - in "The Little Foxes" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" - and one classic movie - Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" - she is more remembered today for her outrageousness than her acting talent.
-Associated Press

Valerie Harper does a bravura turn on Broadway as Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo’s “Looped."

Tallulah’s chief achievement was to unite in one person actress, grande dame and bisexual adventuress. For over 40 years, Bankhead, who died in 1968, flaunted this trinity on stage, screen and in the boudoir, adding a further talent for great, bawdy wit that drink, drugs and age could not diminish.

Last but not least there was that unique Southern tigress drawl, which she brandished as histrionic and sexual strategy, when not as actual weapon. Harper gets all this consummately across, nicely abetted by Charles LaPointe’s wig and William Ivey Long’s slinky sapphire gown.

The occasion is the need to loop, or re-record, a botched line for the dismal “Die, Die, My Darling.” The director has skedaddled, leaving Danny Miller, the disgruntled film editor, in charge as Tallulah, getting looped in another way, drives him and the recording engineer in his booth bonkers.

Bankhead is 63 by now, and although this was not, as Lombardo suggests, her last film, it might as well have been. He found a recording of that sound-studio session, and “enjoying a fair amount of artistic license,” turned it into this madcap comedy with its fair share of obscenely amusing lines.

They Swell, Thou Witty

Of Gary Cooper, she recalls, “I had vaccine shots that stayed in me longer.” And about herself: “When I drink, oooh my poor legs.” ”They swell?” asks Danny. “No, open,” she shoots back.

There are jokes about everything. As Tallulah says, all of life is a joke. In Act II, though, the show grows more serious. Tallulah correctly deduces that Danny, husband and father, has a guilty secret. Whereupon, perhaps a mite too prettily in a perfect volte-face, Tallulah becomes confessor and liberator.

So Brian Hutchison as Danny gets his shot at some heavy acting, and things become moving as he valiantly acquits himself. The worthy Michael Mulheren, as Steve, the sound engineer only half visible in the control booth, makes the most of his few lines.

Harper becomes especially fine as she twice turns into Blanche duBois, a role Bankhead foolishly rejected on Broadway and, much later, came a cropper with at Florida’s Coconut Grove Playhouse. Rising to the occasion, Adrian W. Jones’s set undergoes a suggestive transformation, abbetted by Ken Billington’s careful lighting.

There is confident direction by Rob Ruggiero, managing the tricky changes of pace with aplomb. Finally, however, Harper outpaces everyone, as she should, and without ever losing our empathy.
-Bloomberg News

"LOOPED IS EXTREMELY FUNNY thanks in large part to Valerie Harper's pitch-perfect portrait of the seminal diva. Harper's witty, exuberant performance captures Bankhead's cartoonish flamboyance but also shows us the cunning, resilience and genius for irony behind it."

Long before reality TV was a twinkle in any program director's eye, Tallulah Bankhead proved that self-degradation was a highly marketable art form. Though a famous beauty and promising actress in her youth, Bankhead's most memorable role would be the caricature of herself she became in later years: the gravelly voiced, grotesquely mannered, dissolute creature who launched a thousand drag-queen skits.
Bankhead embraced and milked the part, but what choice did she have? Coming up in a less enlightened era, she was destined to be defined by her exploits as a free-thinking, fast-living woman. Better to be in on the joke than to invite scorn or, worse, pity.

That's clearly the perspective of Matthew Lombardo, the author of Looped (* * * out of four). The play, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, is a passionate, if not entirely convincing, rebuttal to anyone who has tried to reduce Bankhead to a punch line.
- USA Today

Sensitive Souls who yearn to be both abused and mothered by a formidable female icon like Tallulah Bankhead are free to indulge those unhealthy fantasies at "Looped."

Valerie Harper, who is something of a legend in her own rght, gives a brave performance as Tallulah at the end of her days. Bursting into the studio trademark mink over a low-cut cocktail gown (William Ivey Long designed the spot-on period costume) Harper gives us a wonderful taste of the spirited star we came to see.
-Variety

"Valerie Harper gives a tour de force performance as the battered but unbowed Bankhead."

From the familiar whiskey-and-tobacco voice to the unsteady stagger, Harper captures the voracious and volatile diva. Her timing on the laugh lines is impeccable, and her follow-up reactions wring every last guffaw from them. But she's not just doing a funny impersonation. Though Lombardo's script gives the actor ridiculously obvious cues for serious passion—when Bankhead mentions she never had children or when she's asked to perform a monologue from "Streetcar"—Harper delivers the goods. She invests the heavier moments with the same honesty and concentration as the big-yuck payoffs. -Backstage

"Harper delivers a formidable performance as Bankhead. "

Playwright Matthew Lombardo -- who previously demonstrated his affinity for the genre with "Tea at Five," his Katharine Hepburn bio-play starring Kate Mulgrew -- uses a real-life incident for his inspiration. His comedy is set in 1965 at a Los Angeles recording studio, where the imperious diva has arrived to re-record a line for her last film, the horror camp classic "Die! Die! My Darling!" Legend has it that the session lasted eight hours. There's no doubt that the audience is primed for Harper's flamboyant entrance. Bursting into the room wearing sunglasses and a fur coat (despite it being summer), her Bankhead instantly affirms her trademark outrageousness by announcing, "F--- Los Angeles!"

And so it goes for the next 90 minutes or so, with an increasingly booze- and coke-addled Tallulah repeatedly failing to get the line right, much to the consternation of Danny (Brian Hutchison), the film's uptight editor who has been given the thankless task of overseeing the difficult star. Bankhead was an endlessly entertaining character, which the evening exploits by having her deliver an endless series of profane one-liners. For instance, when Danny makes the mistake of innocently moving her bag, Bankhead screams, "Touching a woman's purse is like touching her vagina!" before following it up with a perfectly timed and delivered dirty joke.

Effectively burying her own persona, a bewigged Harper delivers a formidable performance as Bankhead, successfully imitating the star's gravelly, ravaged voice and patrician Southern accent. Not surprisingly, her comic timing is as sharp as ever, and she consistently garners big laughs with her razor-sharp delivery of the endlessly profane dialogue.
-Reuters

"Hugely entertaining! Tallulah Bankhead is magnificently played by Valerie Harper! She paints a portrait of tortured talent
wrapped in an intoxicated shell."

I"I'm bisexual - buy me something and I'll be sexual!" says Tallulah Bankhead, shrieking with laughter, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other. She's witty, bombastic and smart -- a larger-than-life character with hidden depths. And thanks to Looped, the hugely entertaining play by Matthew Lombardo at the Lyceum, she's a force of nature that lights up the stage.

Bankhead is magnificently played by Valerie Harper, who captures her famed mannerisms, as well as the woman beneath the caricature, with style. She paints a portrait of tortured talent wrapped in an intoxicated shell. Bankhead was renown for her outrageous exploits; she's a tiger, but a wounded one. Harper reveals her strengths and vulnerability; her Bankhead is reflective, but never maudlin. She makes her own rules -- and lives with the consequences.

The play's title -- which works on two levels -- is taken from a real-life incident. In one of her last films, Die, Die My Darling, Bankhead is called to a Hollywood recording studio in 1965 to loop a line of movie dialogue. What should have been a quick take reportedly took eight hours to finish. Lombardo has used it to kick-start the story of Bankhead's life, peppered with the quotes that made her legendary.

We meet her on a sound stage with Danny Miller, an exasperated film editor (Brian Hutchison), and a sound engineer (Michael Mulheren). As befits her reputation, she's late. And when she arrives, in a whirlwind of fur and attitude, we know we're in for a wild ride.

Looped, like Lombardo's Tea at Five, the Katherine Hepburn bio-play, showcases a true star. Bankhead's career spanned stage, screen, radio and TV, though her claim to fame was performances on Broadway (The Little Foxes, The Skin of Our Teeth) and the West End. Her grandfather was a U.S. senator, while her father served as a congressman and Speaker of the House. But Bankhead, never a conventional Southern belle, is at her best when she cracks wise: "Here's a rule I recommend," she tells Miller. "Never practice two vices at once." Astounded by her liberal use of drugs, she snorts: "Cocaine isn't habit-forming. I should know -- I've been using it for years."

It's her irreverence that ultimately exposes Miller (perfectly played by Hutchison), whose story is a poignant counterpoint to Bankhead's. "If I had to live my life again," she tells him, "I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." As directed by Rob Ruggiero, who has nicely timed the tension and the laughter, Bankhead's fierce refusal to comport herself is irreverent and admirable. She was liberated long before the idea became acceptable. She may be looped, but she is always the genuine article.
-The Huffington Post

 

LOS ANGELES

"HARPER IS A REVELATION!"
…and has found the second role of a lifetime in Matthew Lombardo’s riveting new play!" You have to dive deep into that steamy Southern psyche to locate the pain and truth, and Harper does this in a wonderfully grounded finely nuanced performance that is always natural and layered even when Bankhead is at her most outrageous and extravagant. The acting chops Harper displays are world class. The material is interesting and enlightening…as funny as it gets in the theatre, with Harper getting off some splendid one-liners plus a slew of vulgarities of great originality. Rob Ruggiero helms the seductive, funny and frequently moving piece.
--The Hollywood Reporter

"HOWLINGLY FUNNY!"
The concept of making the choice to be authentically oneself and then taking responsibility for the results lies at the heart of the remarkable portrait of Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo's new play Looped. The script is fun, touching and sometimes howlingly funny. What makes this play a must-see is the extraordinary work of Valerie Harper, who disappears into Bankhead's overwhelmingly large persona. The results are nothing short of jaw dropping, and allow the more profound undercurrent of the play full sway. Director Rob Ruggiero's subtle choreography allows the whole piece a sense of impromptu abandon, and vital intimacy. --Pasadena Star News

"HILARIOUS!"
Under Rob Ruggiero's direction, Harper adeptly captures Bankhead's distinctive vocal mannerisms and much of Lombardo's dialogue is hilarious. --LA Weekly

"GORGEOUSNESS AND GLAMOUR TO LIFE!"
Harper has a field day relighting the soul of this brassy, bourbon soaked broad. She proves that heretical wit hasn't lost its power.
--Los Angeles Times

"Looped is an outrageously funny, exceedingly heartwarming and deliriously honest play that has all the earmarks of becoming a classic!" A deeply engrossing and utterly satisfying theatrical evening. To say that Valerie Harper was born to play Tallulah Bankhead is perhaps an exaggeration. But, possessing a distinctively rich and uniquely individual voice, Harper is a grounded and gutsy talent who can take on any strong female role and make her convincing and undeniably her own. She did it with Pearl Buck (All Under Heaven, also directed by Rob Ruggiero), Golda Meir and now Tallulah. Mannerisms aside- she has the head, hands and body movements down to perfection- this is not a caricature, but a carefully crafted portrait. Harper's is a brilliantly engaging performance. Her monologue toward the play's finale is a beautifully moving experience. Lombardo digs deep and with Harper's endearing talent for engendering optimism and commitment, Looped is quite a treasure of a play on every level. It will make you laugh, cry and remember fondly the ingenious eccentric that was Miss Tallulah Bankhead. --GrigWareTalksTheatre.com

"YOU SHOULD GO! YOU’LL LOVE IT!"
Valerie Harper storms on stage playing Tallulah Bankhead and looped the audience around her little finger, stealing the show, the crowd, and anything thesbian that wasn't tied down. You don't often see a laugh fest that is gripping and dramatic and here we are given a full plate of top theatre with all the trimmings. Harper cruises the rails seamlessly and channels the fire, anger, contempt and all the other faults that made Tallulah infamous. It is a wonderful performance that moves that audience through all sorts of emotions and in the end they reward her with a multiple curtain standing ovation. This is a magnificently directed perfectly timed piece. --ReviewPlays.com

"HILARIOUSLY FUNNY!"
"One of the best plays in years!" Matthew Lombardo's wonderful new play, Looped is definitely and gloriously a play starring the superb Valerie Harper. Believe me, you will never think of her as just Rhoda again. The play makes Tallulah a character, not a caricature, while giving full entertainment value. Rob Ruggiero, whose direction is clipped but never rushed, deserves credit for this. --CurtainUp

WEST PALM BEACH

"Valerie Harper makes a grand entrance as Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo's "Looped". Fur-wrapped, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, the grande dame stumbles onto a movie sound stage, clearly the worse for wear from booze and pills. She bats those unfocused bedroom eyes and unleashes her first pronouncement of the evening: "Fuck Los Angeles!" From there, the play grows exponentially more raucous, anarchic and raunchy. Scores of zingers, one-liners, retorts and anecdotes left the opening night audience roaring so loud the actors often struggled to be heard!" "Sporting an auburn wig, penciled eyebrows and a voice that sounds like she smoked three cartons of cigarettes before breakfast, Harper solidly inhabits a character so consumed by excess she allowed her celebrity persona to eclipse her considerable talent. Harper proved her theatrical chops in "Golda's Balcony" and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife." Nonetheless, Florida audiences are relishing seeing just how far the actress can stretch beyond her television roles to animate this alien creature. Still, it's Harper's well-honed sitcom timing that enables her to pull off deadpan lines like "Of course, I have a drinking problem. Whenever I'm not drinking? Oh honey, it's a problem." "Lombardo deftly sidesteps those clunky "and then I played Hamlet in Macbeth for Kit Cornell in 1934..." passages that sink many bio-shows. But the playwright's real skill is melding Bankhead's documented bon mots with a cascade of hysterical Bankhead-like repartee -- the best of it unprintable -- that the diva could only wish she had said."
--Daily Variety

"This production is rumored to be headed for Broadway, and it belongs there!" I know some people who have never seen live theater and they often wonder why others love going to shows. "Looped" is why we go. We laugh with abandon, we ponder life's experiences and, for a couple of hours, we visit with fascinating characters. This is what theater is. And "Looped" takes you there." --South Florida Blade

WASHINGTON, DC

"FOUR STARS!"
Forget Rhoda Morgenstern, the character who made Valerie Harper a star on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. From the moment Harper staggers onto the stage wearing a mink coat and complaining about the unbearable August heat in Los Angeles, she is Tallulah.

Playwright Matthew Lombardo used audiotapes of an actual recording session with Bankhead as the basis of this terrific play. Whether the lines are his or Bankhead's, the biting wit is bawdy but hysterical. "So," Bankhead says to Miller, "men either want to f--- me or be me. Which are you?"

She proceeds to demand a drink, smoke, pop pills, and stall her way through hours of recording time—to the delight of the audience. Goede is Harper's perfect foil—his posture stiff and his attitude equally unbending as he decries Bankhead's vanity and vices. In act two, the movie star breaks down his defenses and shows she's still a consummate professional: She could have looped her line all along.

Harper is divine as Tallulah, an actress who not only chewed the scenery but sniffed it, snorted it, and drank it down to the dregs. Director Rob Ruggiero wisely allows Harper free reign to be the true Tallulah.
--The Washingtonian

"HYSTERICAL!"
"Valerie Harper is delightful in this 105 minute session of non-stop laughter! It’s on its way to Broadway so see it now!"
Looped, the hysterical production of Matthew Lombardo's "Looped" at the Lincoln Theatre on U Street stars 4-time Emmy Award winner Valerie Harper (Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore Show) portraying Hollywood icon and bad girl Tallulah Bankhead. She was so bad, she made Britney Spears and Paris Hilton look innocent.

Harper, the popular TV star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff Rhoda, wisely doesn't go overboard in trying to capture Bankhead's vocal delivery. She gets close enough to that distinctive fusion of purr, snarl and vestigial drawl to evoke the real thing, without ever slipping into camp.

Harper makes every swig of booze, pop of a pill, puff of a cigarette and toss of the head seem thoroughly natural as she chews up the evocative set by Adrian W. Jones.

William Ivey Long's costume design is spot-on, outfitting this Tallulah with a cocktail dress that, appropriately, seems spun from the same cloth as the one worn by Bette Davis during the pivotal, fasten-your-seat-belts scene in All About Eve.

In the end, Looped provides a hearty reminder of what good company Bankhead must have been, and why her parties were so legendary. How can you not fall under the spell of someone whose definition of bisexual is "Buy me something, I'll be sexual"? Or who proudly declares: "No one had a better upbringing than me. And just look how deliciously disgraceful I turned out."

But Lombardo doesn't settle for mere nightclub-y entertainment. His obvious affection for Bankhead, his determination to make of her something much more than a ripe target for impersonation, comes through at every turn.

Harper clearly gets that extra layer; she's after something three-dimensional here, too, and it pays off particularly well near the end of the play, in the way slyly matter-of-factly way she delivers the line: "There is always going to be pain in life. But suffering? That one is optional."

The image of a defiantly looped Tallulah refusing to wallow in that option registers with as much force as the steady stream of potent one-liners.
--Baltimore Sun

"PURE THEATRICAL MAGIC!"
Happy bedlam, but bedlam nonetheless.

This is the case when Valerie Harper makes her first entrance as bawdy bad girl Tallulah Bankhead. It is, make no mistake, an entrance to be appreciated but, for those of us who appreciate the superstition that the theater breeds, who do not say the name of the Scottish play or wish any performer anything other than the breaking of a leg or two -- pre-applause is disconcerting.

After all, what if that entrance is the last thing to warrant applause?

Superstition be damned, that is not a problem with Looped, a scathingly funny, deliciously inappropriate and, more surprising than anything else, play gifted with a delicate and touching soul. Sometimes, the saying goes, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Try to fight either as hard as you can. You will end up doing both.

Bringing Looped's Bankhead gloriously to full-throated life is Harper. Whether you applaud her entrance because you see Rhoda Morgenstern or Golda Meir (who Harper played in the one-woman show Golda's Balcony), give this actor proper time and attention. Harper has achieved that most difficult of feats. She has lost herself in this fantastic character.

Her deft skill as a comedienne shines as she pushes the limits, but she resists the urge to fall into cartoon and caricature. Sure, there is a slash of red lipstick where a mouth should be. Yes, her Tallulah is a never-ending geometry of angles and hip and elbows. Indeed, there is a drawl that is deliciously pulled from somewhere south of her feet. But it is executed in such an organic fashion, you fall more than a bit in love.
--Metro Weekly