Looped, or: the Attack of the Gay Play
Looped, the new play about Tallulah Bankhead, ranks among the worst plays I’ve ever seen on Broadway. I saw it in previews. God help us all if its open run makes it to Easter.
Nice Tallulah zingers here and there, but they could have left out the rest of the play and just forwarded the zingers in email.
Valerie Harper mangles the Tallulah style. She plays her all drunk and vulgar. If you go to YouTube and check out a few clips of the real Tallulah, you’ll see the real woman may have been drunk, and may have had some salty things on her mind, but she was a very graceful, classy presence. Which is exactly why – hellooo! – she could pull off being loose and addicted and still be interesting. Somehow that little gem of characterization got lost on this team.
But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst is that, for no reason except that it may apparently be a gay fantasy, Act 2 of the play melts into a squishy meatloaf thick scene of gay confessions of gay repression to Tallulah. Well isn’t that just every gay man’s fantasy: If you were in the closet, to be able to come out strong to a loving and caring Tallulah Bankhead??
I thought I was coming to see a play about Tallulah Bankhead, her times, the issues she dealt with… Instead I get yet another play about a guy who wants to come out. Why? Tallulah wasn’t interesting enough? Is a play not a play anymore if a guy doesn’t reveal he’s gay?
