Theater: Rhoda Gone Wild

It’s the joy of attending a preview performance: you can enjoy the theatrical experience without knowing how much The New York Times hates the show you are seeing.
I experienced this last Friday night at “Looped,” the new Broadway-based bio-play, about Tallulah Bankhead. This one stars Valerie Harper, which pretty much describes why it’s worth seeing. Ostensibly the play is about how the theater legend had to “loop” or re-record a line of dialogue on the last film she ever did. Since she’s drunk and high and generally high-strung, that turns out not to be an easy assignment. Although the basic idea is rooted in truth, a New York Post critic charged Monday that at least one plot point is way off base, historically speaking.
Some of us, though, were there more for Valerie than for Tallulah. Having grown up with Mary and Rhoda, I am a pretty big Harper fan. She delivers in this stage turn, as she has in others. I once saw her turn a play about the writer Pearl Buck into a worthwhile endeavor, so she sure as hell is not going to have a problem making Tallulah interesting. There’s no mistaking that behind the sitcom legend exists an actual actress. Harper’s comic timing was never in question, but she’s a startlingly good physical performer. She knows how to use her body, whether she’s reaching or slumping or commanding the stage, which she does right from her entrance.
Playing Bankhead in full-diva mode, Harper’s aforementioned comic timing gets quite a workout. The script by Matthew Lombardo is not necessarily more than the sum of its parts. But the parts are funny, some of the laugh-out-loud variety. In places it’s predictable or hoary or, since this is the famously promiscuous theater legend we are talking about, whore-y. But I found myself laughing out loud at the jokes about sex, drugs and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. So sue me.
I was hardly alone. This was an audience of Harper fans. “She’ll always be Rhoda to me,” said the woman who bought tickets in front of me at the box office a few weeks ago. Now Harper will always be Tallulah too, but the Times, in the person of Charles Isherwood, expressed a general sense of disappointment about the play once the review came yesterday morning. Isherwood has a point, but I think anyone who has a sense of theater history or appreciates larger-than-life performance might want to catch “Looped.” There are laughs to be had and moments to be savored.