Event

LOOPED by Matthew Lombardo

Though Bankhead's outsized personality dominates the play, the sub-story involves her battle of wills with a film editor named Danny Miller, who has been selected to work that particular sound editing session.Its the last day of postproduction on Die! Die! My Darling, one of those schlocky gothic thrillers that allowed former grande dames and sex goddesses of the screen to scrape a living in their later years, or simply pass the time before the cameras until the ultimate final cut. A single line of dialogue requires looping rerecording to match the film but Tallulah cannot manage to speak the requisite syllables in the proper order. As she stalls and stutters, expressing infinite scorn for the tedious process, she perfumes the stale air of the studio with snappy one-liners on her favorite subjects, namely her own eccentric behavior and uneven career, and the consoling seductions of booze, drugs, cigarettes and sex. Her audience consists of a beleaguered film editor, Danny who has been corralled into supervising the session because the director skipped town, and a studio technician, who watches from a booth above the studio as Tallulah toys with poor Danny like a haughty, grizzled feline batting around a hapless mouse.