One of Milwaukee’s most interesting theater companies, TheateRED, collaborates with first-time theater group Untitled Productions for a show guaranteed to keep audiences laughing throughout: I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers. The show, making its Milwaukee debut, also introduces local theatergoers to a new theater space: the second-story ballroom at the Third Ward’s Kimpton Journeyman Hotel. The spacious ballroom, studded with small tables and chairs, is an elegantly appointed area that’s appropriate for this one-woman play about the late Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s first super-agent.
Savvy theatergoers may recall that Bette Midler originally played the role on Broadway. The show opened in April 2013 at the intimate Booth Theater, where it ran until early summer. For those of us that missed Midler’s performance, only can only imagine the bitchy dialogue and claws-bared approach of la Midler playing Sue Mengers. While one cannot expect such an outwardly outrageous performance as the one Midler reputedly gave on Broadway, Milwaukee actor Marcee Doherty-Elst provides us with an equally engaging Mengers — perhaps one who is feeling the chill effect of the (fake) doobie she smokes off and on during the 75-minute show. As Mengers, Doherty-Elst isn’t afraid to speak her mind or show her emotions as the always-on-the-job agent to the stars. Sometimes, when she’s talking with a snarl in her voice, one can’t help but think: “with friends like her, who needs enemies?” But Mengers’s friends and enemies all seem to consist of people who fall into these three categories: her clients, her would-be clients or past clients (Of course, the former clients are cast into the role of “enemies.”) The only star who gets a pass is Ali MacGraw, who left the screen for motherhood and a stable family life with the late, A-list actor Steve McQueen. Their marriage (Ali’s third) only lasted five years, but she ended up with enough cash to say “no thank you” to Sue Mengers and every other agent that called on her during that period. (Interestingly, MacGraw, 78, made a recent, brief comeback with former “Love Story” star Ryan O’Neal in a tour of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters.”) Mengers isn’t so serene when it comes to describing some of the other sparkly stars on her chain bracelet, such as Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway (both of whom received Oscars for films suggested by Sue Mengers, she claims). But Mengers begins and ends her show with her first and still-most-important client: Barbra Streisand. “I knew her before she lost the extra ‘a’ in her name,” claims Mengers, who spotted a young Streisand singing in a nightclub and signed her as soon as possible. The grateful Streisand responded by taking Mengers to many social events. Being Streisand’s sidekick was Mengers’s ticket to glory, she admits. Doherty-Elst, dressed in an expensive caftan and wearing Mengers’ signature oversized glasses, spends the entire show sitting on a couch. She “almost” apologizes for not getting up for us, (the useless little people), who’ve come to see her downfall. You see, Mengers is waiting for a phone call from Streisand to see if the news is true that Streisand is switching agents. (The show is wisely set in the early 80’s, before cell phones and caller ID.) Mengers answers a few phone calls (none of them from Streisand); one of them is from a star with an ominous, no-show message to one of Mengers’ famous parties later that evening).
Director Eric Welsh keeps the suspense going throughout: Is Mengers ever going to get her call from Streisand, whom Mengers considers a loyal friend as well as a client? In Hollywood, it seems, everything is up for grabs, including personal relationships. Doherty-Elst reminds us of this in one of the summer’s most delightful shows.
