As the country waits to learn who will be our next president, Tallulah Bankhead is on stage at the Mechanic Theatre, presiding over a fund-raiser for President Harry S. Truman's re-election.
The ironies abound. The presidential races in both 1948 and 2000 were breathtakingly close. Fifty-two years ago, the Chicago Tribune erroneously declared Thomas Dewey the winner; yesterday, several papers prematurely ceded the victory to Republican George W. Bush.
Both elections made for great theater - more so than the one-woman show at the Mechanic. The difficulty doesn't lie with Turner, however. She's the best thing about Sandra Ryan Heyward's Broadway-bound play. Indeed, Bankhead is a role Turner seems born to play.
"Tallulah" takes place in the bedroom of Bankhead's Westchester County home. Bankhead, the flamboyant mid-20th century film and stage star, makes her entrance following the sound of a flushing toilet and amid the constant ringing of one of three phones in the room. Her first word, uttered in a voice that's low in all senses of the word, is an obscenity.
For the next two hours, Turner takes control of the stage in a grand manner - by turns ranting, confiding and primping, with a diva's prerogative. Whether or not Turner is accurately limning Bankhead is almost inconsequential. Heyward's play, written with Turner in mind, is a star vehicle, and Turner flaunts her stardom with every sweeping gesture and baritone-tinged pronouncement.
And yet, the script can feel formulaic, particularly when it relies on phone calls and lengthy reminiscences. Though these are common failings of one-person shows, the drama suffers when too much information is narrated to the audience.
Bankhead's bedroom was never a very private place. No doubt there were times when the star considered it her stage. So it isn't that much of a leap for her to welcome an entire audience into its opulent confines, decorated here by set designer Derek McLane with a profusion of honey-colored drapes.
The central conceit is strikingly similar to "Full Gallop," the hit one-woman show about fashion editor Diana Vreeland. In both cases, the main character is throwing a party, "Tallulah" begins with Bankhead awaiting the guests - 350 of them, including President Truman - for her fund-raising party. (It's a fictitious event, although Bankhead was an ardent Truman supporter, speaking on his behalf on national radio as well as at a Madison Square Garden rally.)
