Looped, by Matthew Lombardo, is an invented take on Tallulah Bankhead - a made-up situation in which the actress has to loop (repeat on tape) one line from her final movie, and it takes two hours filled with comic invention based on characteristics and foibles of the star.
Valerie Harper, a gifted comic actress, plays all the variations on degrees of inebriation that Tallulah goes through as she confronts the poor, sensitive soul, Brian Hutchison, whose job it is to record her. She's vivid. Since he's working with an invention, Lombardo can riff on the character and create jokes -- and there are lots of them, performed with perfect timing. Harper is also terrific as she flashes back to her performance as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Set by Adrian W. Jones, lighting by Ken Billington and costumes by William Ivey Long enhance everything. Director Rob Ruggiero keeps the play active and has the nerve (correctly) to place his star upstage, facing the audience, with Hutchison downstage facing her. He's right - Tallulah (Harper) is whom we want to see. This is a very entertaining show with a great comic performance of a wild, brash, uninhibited character whom some of us actually remember - and quite fondly.
