THANK YOU, Judith Ivey, for reminding me why I fell in love with the theater. After a brief break, the theater and I are firmly back together, and all because of the unlikeliest of offerings: a one-woman show about advice columnist Ann Landers.
Never underestimate the power of a star performer partnered with a solid script. And though playwright David Rambo leans a little too heavily on old “wacky” questions to Landers in The Lady With All the Answers, he has also successfully sidestepped the question of how to make his only character discuss her past without resorting to the cheap “Let me tell you about the time…” that so many other authors of solo shows feel no qualms about employing.
Over the course of a very long night in June of 1975, Ann Landers is procrastinating. As she slips away from her typewriter again and again, she sorts through old clippings to see what she should include in a book, chats on the phone with her daughter and her sister (rival columnist Dear Abby) and entertains the audience with stories about the people she’s helped and how she came to be known as the lady with all the answers.
Along the way, Rambo slips in details about Landers’s staggering worth ethic—after a trip to Vietnam, she personally called over 2,500 family members and friends of American soldiers—and the advances she made in the newspaper industry, including being the first columnist to use the word “homosexual.” More importantly, Landers gives Ivey the chance to show an impish side that she is rarely called upon to reveal, to thoroughly charming effect.With her helmet-hair wig and flat accent, Ivey seems like exactly the sort of woman who has all the answers, one who isn’t afraid of doling out advice with big-hearted generosity and a twinkle in her eye at human foibles. Rambo also gives her one of the best act-one curtain lines of the last season, a world-weary sentence that crams all of the repressed rage and depression of anyone with a perpetually sunny disposition: “Well, life is just one goddamn thing after another.”
Up at 59E59 Theaters, Brian Lee Franklin is giving a far less effective performance as another real life figure in Good Bobby, his play about Bobby Kennedy. Lacking the charisma of a real life politician, Franklin’s whining performance does his play no favors. Rather than write a character-driven piece about Bobby and the large shadow cast by his dynastic family, Franklin has chosen to take the macro view, recreating the bullet points of Kennedy’s career with the diligence of a timeline in a high school history book.
The result is a muddled series of re-enactments with all the flair and pizzazz of a segment from a TruTV series. Here’s Bobby questioning Jimmy Hoffa during the latter’s trial; here’s Bobby going up against his father, Joseph Kennedy (Steve Mendillo) and trying not to take the job as his brother’s presidential campaign manager; Bobby refusing to issue a statement regarding Marilyn Monroe’s death. Other than the fact that Bobby resents his family, Franklin has little to say about what drove this complicated and much-beloved political figure.
Under Pierson Blaetz’s lackluster direction, which relies heavily on old footage and newspaper headlines to keep the audience informed of what major event we’re about to witness, the supporting actors come across as overwhelmed and underwhelming. Mendillo is a particular disappointment; never summoning the terrifying power of Joe Kennedy, he instead bumbles through his scenes and knocks props over, never fully at ease until old Joe is safely paralyzed in a chair after a stroke. Sile Bermingham has some good moments as Bobby’s put-upon secretary, and Paul Marius is a welcome presence as his assistant Attorney General, one of the few low-key characters on stage amidst so many high voltage personalities.
But any play about RFK lives or dies by its lead actor, and Franklin, with his nasal stammer, just doesn’t convincingly evoke the man who would become the left’s great new hope.
> The Lady with all the Answers
Through Nov. 29, Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce St. (betw. 7th Ave. & Bedford St.), 212-239-6200; times vary, $40–$50.
Through Nov. 8, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), 212-279-4200; times vary, $24.50–$35.
