Annette Bening’s tribute to Ruth Draper consists of her delivering four of the late actress’s most famous monologues: “A Class in Greek Poise,” “A Debutante at a Dance,” “Doctors and Diets,” and “The Italian Lesson.” Draper (1884-1956), who came from a wealthy New York family, began creating characters and voices at a young age. She entertained mostly at private parties for such admirers as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mrs Waldorf Astoria, before turning professional in 1914, thanks to the encouragement of Henry James and John Singer Sargent.
It didn’t take long for Draper to become a star, both in England and America, where her gifts at mimicry and impersonation made her famous and wealthy. She continued to write new monologues for herself, building a rich repertoire that she could draw on to the end of her life. She also paved the way for such non-traditional solo performers as Spalding Gray, Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg.
”I have this weird interest in this lady,” said Bening in an L.A. Times interview. “She had an ability to listen and re-create accents, cadences, different ages of people . . . There are no villains, just people doing their best. The frailties, the faults, the weaknesses, what is ridiculous . . . that’s what I’m trying to tease out.”
Bening does the teasing out on a near-bare stage with just a few costumes (elegantly designed by Catherine Zuber) and props to help herself out. Thanks to her commanding presence and Draper’s touchingly human and deeply humorous writing, Ruth Draper’s Monologues catches you up in its unique spell, allowing you at the same time to use your own imagination in relating to the material. A case in point is “The Italian Lesson.” Bening plays a rich dowager who has hired an (unseen) instructor to brush up her Italian by helping her to translate “The Divine Comedy.” The dowager, though, gets no further than the first line owing to an unending series of distractions: phone calls, children being naughty, a puppy nipping at her ankles. Bening does not play any of this for laughs: there is no mugging or clowning of any kind. The dowager is dead serious about improving her Italian; the more serious she gets, the funnier becomes the narration. The distance between intention and achievement has never been more poignantly delineated.
