Jun 12, 2009  |  By: Joey DiGuglielmo  | COMMENTS     

Sometimes a movie, play or TV show comes along and gives an actress an opportunity to demonstrate wells of dramatic ability one previously didn’t know existed. Farrah Fawcett in “Extremities,” Charlize Theron in “Monster,” Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” even (don’t laugh!) Meryl Streep in “She-Devil” (who knew she could be so funny?).

Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead in “Looped” is one of those performances. This tour de force turn may not be such a shock to those who’ve followed Harper’s stage career closer than I. She earned raves for recent performances as Golda Meir in “Golda’s Balcony” (2007) and “Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” (2003), which I didn’t see. But “Looped,” being performed now in its third incarnation by Arena Stage at Lincoln Theatre on U Street, N.W., was a shock of delicious proportions to me. I hadn’t seen her in much since “Valerie,” her ’86 NBC sitcom (charming, but hardly a challenge), so this was a revelation. Even with all the DVDs and reruns, Rhoda Morgenstern may no longer be the first thing I think of for Harper. She was that good.

“Looped,” written by gay playwright Matthew Lombardo (“Tea at Five”), portrays legendary stage actress and gay icon Tallulah Bankhead at an exasperating looping session for her final film, “Die! Die! My Darling!,” a schlocky ’60s “Baby Jane” horror/hag knock-off that was one of Bankhead’s last performances (and her last film, though she didn’t make many).

Danny Miller (Jay Goede) is a film editor who somehow gets snagged to oversee the session. Steve (Michael Orenstein) spends most of his time in the control room while Danny attempts to cajole a tipsy Tallulah into dubbing the single line, which ends up taking hours. It’s based on a real incident.

 Bankhead, who died in 1968, has inspired playwrights before but “Looped” is an infinitely better work than Sandra Ryan Heyward’s 2000 play (“Tallulah”), which starred Kathleen Turner, who, in theory, seems a much more likely candidate to play Bankhead than Harper.

But Harper’s unexpected casting works in her favor — Turner merely threw on a gown and walked out on stage in that one-woman show. Harper transforms and disappears, with the help of an un-credited makeup designer and Chuck LaPointe’s apparently seamless and dead-on wig, which Harper has a field day with, tossing locks from her face with trademark Tallulah flourish.

Harper as Bankhead is uncannily good. She disappears into the part and you forget it’s her the way you forget it’s Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line” or Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in “Ray.” She’s that convincing, brilliantly aping Bankhead’s pseudo-British accent, throaty growl of a voice, tipsy grand dame body language and hilarious, but also irascible and abrasive, personality.

Some of her best moments are the most innocuous — she’s hysterical frantically rummaging through her purse while Danny has a meltdown. And during the woozy, rambling monologue and exit that closes the first act, in which she turns her back to the audience, it’s almost as if Bankhead’s spirit has descended on the production and, in stray seconds here and there, you feel as if Tallulah herself is in the room.

And while the depth of Harper’s skill was a pleasant surprise, so too was the quality of the play itself. I figured it would be fun, but fun in a drag queen, cabaret-style run through Bankhead’s most well-known quips and barbs (like Lypsinka in “Passion of the Crawford”). While there is plenty of the bawdy Bankhead humor here, this really is a play, with a story to tell, a dramatic arc to deliver and, again surprisingly, substantial insight into what made Bankhead tick (and what makes Danny tick as well).

In terms of scope and heft, it would be hard to call this a new addition to the canon of great American plays, but for what it is, it’s positively brilliant. The tone, pacing, acting, sets — literally everything, are in perfect sync.