For more than 25 years, San Diego actress Eileen Bowman has hilariously played numerous kooky and colorful characters in musicals and comedies around town.
But in “Looped,” which the Roustabouts Theatre Co. opened Sunday in Scripps Ranch, Bowman has found a character that allows her to showcase her dramatic range in a way she hasn’t been able to before.
Bowman stars in Matthew Lombardo’s 2008 play as Tallulah Bankhead, the real-life, larger-than-life stage and screen star whose insatiable appetite for sex, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs led to her premature death at age 66 in 1968. Set three years before her death in a Los Angeles sound studio, the two-hour play is inspired by a real incident when an intoxicated Bankhead spent eight hours attempting to loop (record a voice-over for a film) just one sentence of dialogue for the low-budget horror film “Die! Die! My Darling!”
Lombardo’s script is mostly fiction, imagining the love-hate relationship Bankhead forms with the exasperated film editor “Danny,” but it layers in some of the most notorious stories from Bankhead’s infamous past and it delivers a lot of laughs.
The play’s subplot about the secret Danny’s keeping about his personal life telegraphs itself very early on, and the play would probably work better as a tighter, 90-minute one act. But it’s still entertaining, thanks in particular to Roustabouts artistic director Phil Johnson’s subtle and thoughtful stage direction that mines every ounce of humor from the script while avoiding caricature and slapstick comedy.
Bowman’s Tallulah is drunk, flirtatious, bawdy, fearless, funny and freewheeling, but she’s also heartbroken and desperately lonely. As Danny, Alex Guzman gradually takes his uptight character from annoyed simmer to a full boiling fury, then back down again in a believable and sensitive way. Completing the cast is Chris Braden as Steve, the sound engineer who speaks mostly in voice-over from the sound booth but occasionally pops out to fawn over the aging star.
The show’s physical production re-creates the look of the fading days of Hollywood’s silver-screen era. Tony Cucuzzella designed the mid-century-style sound studio, Jemima Dutra designed the lux period costumes, Ted Leib designed sound and Curtis Mueller designed lighting. Peter Herman’s wig design for Tallulah is excellent.
Bankhead passed away more than 50 years ago, so she’s likely to be a mystery to many theatergoers. But no knowledge of her life or career is necessary to follow the plot of this play. It’s not so much about the decline of her health and career, but about two lonely people seeking connection in a world that’s been unfriendly to them both.
‘Looped’
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Through Oct. 20
Where: The Roustabouts at the Legler Benbough Theatre, Alliant International University campus, 9783 Avenue of Nations, San Diego
Tickets: $45, general; $10, students
Phone: (619) 568-5800
Online: theroustabouts.org
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