'LOOPED' HAS TROUBLE STAYING ON TRACK.

Byline: Jim Farber

Staff Writer

By the time notorious stage and screen legend Tallulah Bankhead entered a Los Angeles recording studio in 1965 (three years before her death at the age of 66), she was a walking train wreck, her body, mind and spirit ravaged by years of drug and alcohol abuse. Nevertheless, she was Tallulah, a formidable power to be reckoned with.

The session required Bankhead to re-record a single line of dialogue from her last screen appearance in "Die! Die! My Darling." It should have taken less than an hour. Instead, it went on for eight!

It is from this Hollywood moment that Matthew Lombardo has freely imagined his Tallulah Bankhead bio-drama, "Looped," which had its world premiere Tuesday at the Pasadena Playhouse starring Valerie Harper ("Rhoda") as the hard-living legend.

Unfortunately, Lombardo has written two plays instead of one, and they don't fit together very well. Act 1 is pure sitcom farce, with Harper playing Bankhead as a blithering, blathering, blustering cross between her historic character, Norma Desmond (waiting for her close-up in "Sunset Boulevard"), Martha (in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") and Medusa.

Every line is a set-up fed to her by either the film's uptight, straight- laced editor Danny Miller (played by "St. Elsewhere's" Chad Allen) or the rarely seen sound technician, Steve (Michael Karl Orenstein). It's a comic style that Harper is certainly familiar with. But she starts her performance at the level of a rant and never lets up.

Lombardo (who is best-known for "Tea at Five," his bio-play about Kate Hepburn) feels obligated to cram in a who's-who worth of biographical information and a Bartlett's worth of Bankhead's most famous bon mots: "If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner," or, "My father warned me about men and booze, but he never said anything about women and cocaine," for example.

As one astute audience member observed at intermission, "What this play needs is some serious (as opposed to comic) relief." Frankly, I would have been happy to leave at that point.

But I am glad I didn't.

That's because in Act 2, "Looped" finally turns into an insightfully written, skillfully performed human drama, as Bankhead and Miller borrow a page from Edward Albee and play a hard-hitting round of "Peel the Label."

"Truth!" shouts Harper. That's what we're after, as she systematically gets Miller to reveal a multitude of reasons (including the results of a devastating homosexual affair) that have left him the way he is.

The difference between them, she points out, speaking from years of experience, is that he is still young enough to change his life. While she's been burning the candle at both ends so long there's no candle left, there's no reason for him, she says in no uncertain terms, to go through the rest of his life with his candle snuffed out.

Rather than just ranting, Harper's performance settles down to the level of a real human. She not only talks, she listens, observes and responds with sincerity. The result is real theater, fueled by real emotions. And when he cajoles her into repeating a powerful moment from her performance as Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," we finally get a glimpse of the greatness that was Tallulah Bankhead.

It is unlikely at this point that "Looped" will be able to undergo the surgery it needs. Its form and direction by Rob Ruggiero are locked in, at least for the run in Pasadena. But there is no question that some serious doctoring is needed if this two-limbed play is to become a single-bodied drama.

Jim Farber [phone], Ext. 416; [e-mail]

LOOPED - Two and one half stars

>Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena.

>When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Aug. 3. Also 8 p.m. July 16 and 23.

>Tickets: $32 to $65.

[phone], www.pasadenaplayhouse.org.

>In a nutshell: "Looped," Matthew Lombardo's Tallulah Bankhead bio-drama starring Valerie Harper, has the makings of an interesting play. But it is a house divided against itself.

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(color) Valerie Harper plays a decimated Tallulah Bankhead, with co-star Chad Allen, in "Looped," at the Pasadena Playhouse.