When you write a play about a real person, chances are you don’t want the audience to leave the theater thinking, “Hmm, I bet she was a lot more interesting than that.”
This is unfortunately the smaller-than-life treatment given to Eppie
Friedman Lederer, who wrote a famed advice column as Ann Landers, in
the Cleveland Play House production of The Lady With All the
Answers.
This one-person show fills two acts with plenty of weird letters
from troubled people (or pranksters), but playwright David Rambo
stubbornly refuses to delve deeper into Lederer’s inner psyche. The
result is an evening of easy titters and pre-chewed humor but scant
insight into one of the most influential newspaper columnists of the
second half of the 20th century.
Eppie and her twin sister Pauline (who became the doyenne of the
competitively syndicated “Dear Abby” advice column), had an ongoing
professional and personal feud for years. But the seriousness of that
split is shrugged off in this play with a couple of short phone calls
between the two gals.
Most of the time is taken up with Eppie trying to overcome writer’s
block as she attempts to craft a column announcing her impending
divorce. Married 36 years to Julius Lederer, the founder of Budget Rent
a Car, Eppie is caught between her rage at his affair with a young
woman and her long-standing opposition to divorce.
But even though she’s onstage for a long time, Rambo never has Eppie
explain why she never worked to save her treasured marriage. Instead,
we get a ton of winks and knowing asides as she reads letters from
folks who like to screw while wearing a motorcycle helmet or clean
house in the nude.
As directed by Seth Gordon, Mimi Kennedy creates a warm and feisty
presence for Eppie that feels very comfortable. But the whole show is
too comfy by half, lacks dramatic tension and actually minimizes her
significant contributions to the discussion of controversial issues
such as homosexuality and the Vietnam War.
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2009.
