Steve On Broadway (SOB)

Looped (The SOB Review)

Looped (The SOB Review) - Lyceum Theatre, New York, City, New York

*1/2 (out of ****)

First, let me give credit where credit is most certainly due.

As Tallulah Bankhead, Valerie Harper gives the performance of her life. Brilliantly capturing the essence of this saucy, if belligerent star, Harper naturally drops virtually every bon mot for which Bankhead became famous with gusto.

But therein lies the problem with Matthew Lombardo's vapid and lazy script. Relying on Bankhead's witticisms and the kindness of a stranger to beef up a reed thin plot, the only real originality displayed in Lombardo's work centers on the manufactured tension between Tallulah and Danny (Brian Hutchison), a sound technician with a secret whose sole mission is to get the intoxicated actress to redo and synch up one solitary line she had garbled while filming her latest movie.

In a departure from the reason we're there, Lombardo chases down Danny's ridiculous rabbit hole of a subplot that's all too pap and entirely unnecessary.

Looped has some genuine laughs and is worth seeing for Harper's terrific performance. But overall, this play just plain loopy.

This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).

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Labels: Brian Hutchison, Broadway, Looped, Matthew Lombardo, Play, Tallulah Bankhead, The SOB Review, Valerie Harper

posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Friday, April 09, 2010