Ashley to Star as Tallulah Bankhead in Private Reading

Tony Award-winner Elizabeth Ashley will play husky-voiced legend Tallulah Bankhead in a private reading of Looped, a new play by Matthew Lombardo (Tea at Five).

Presented at New World Stages on January 8th at 3 PM, the reading will also feature Neal Huff (The Little Dog Laughed Off-Broadway, Take Me Out, "The Wire") in the role of sound technician Danny Miller.

John Tillinger (Absurd Person Singular, Judgment at Nuremburg) will direct. 

The show is based "on an actual event that took place in the summer of 1965 when a 63-year old Bankhead entered a Los Angeles recording studio in an effort to re-record (or 'loop') one line from the film 'Die, Die My Darling!' The session was only to have lasted a mere five minutes. It instead took well over eight hours," press notes state.

Ashley is a Tony Award-winner for her performance in Take Her, She's Mine, and has also been nominated for her work in Barefoot in the Park and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  She has also been seen on Broadway in Enchanted April, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Agnes of God, Caesar and Cleopatra, Legend, and The Skin of Our Teeth, among others.