RIALTO CHATTER: Valarie Harper to be 'LOOPED' on Broadway?

If a recent casting notice is any indication, Emmy Award winner Valerie Harper may be headed back to Broadway as aging actress Tallulah Bankhead in LOOPED this spring.

LOOPED, by Matthew Lombardo (Tea at Five), tells the story of Bankhead sparring with a cloistered technician, Danny Miller, in a "looping session" for what would be her last film. LOOPED had its world premiere in the summer of 2008 at Pasadena Playhouse.  Thereafter, it played Cuillo Centre for the Arts in Florida. LOOPED enjoyed a successful run directed by Rob Ruggiero (Make Me a Song, Ella) at Arena Stage in Washington DC in June of this year.  According to the casting notice, Ruggiero will also direct the Broadway installment, which is anticipating February previews and a March opening at a yet-to-be-named theater. 

Tony Cacciotti, Chase Mishkin and Leonard Soloway are producing.

The role of Danny Miller,played by Jay Goede at Arena, in addition to the voice of an off-stage character named Steve have yet to be cast.

Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968) was the outspoken and ball-busting actress whose is famous for her roles: Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth, Regina in The Little Foxes and Blanche Du Bois in a 1956 City Center production of A Steeetcar Named Desire. She appeared in a total of 23 Broadway shows, also including Footloose, The Little Foxes, and Private Lives. She was nominated for a Best Actress Tony in 1961 for the play Midgie Purvis.

Valerie Harper achieved fame as Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda". During those nine years, she was the recipient of a Golden Globe, Harvard University Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, Hollywood Women's Press Club "Golden Apple", and Photoplay Gold Medal Awards. Her stage career began at Radio City Music Hall, in the Corps de Ballet. She was in the Broadway musicals "Li'l Abner", "Destry Rides Again", "Take Me Along", "Wildcat", and "Subways Are For Sleeping"; as well as in Carl Reiner's "Something Different", the Tony award-winning "Paul Sills' Story Theater", Sills' production of "Ovid's Metamorphoses", and in Charles Busch's "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife". Valerie has starred in the feature films "Blame It On Rio", Neil Simon's "Chapter Two", "Freebie and The Bean", and "The Last Married Couple In America" to name a few. She has also starred in many television movies. Her other notable TV appearances include "The Shadow Box", directed by Paul Newman; Neil Simon's "The Trouble With People", Norman Lear's "I Love Liberty", and as host of the acclaimed documentary on child abuse "Innocence On Trial". She has performed with various companies of Second City and Story Theatre across the continent and toured in "Dear Liar" (a play comprised of letters between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell), "Agnes of God", and "Golda's Balcony". She and her husband Tony Cacciotti developed a one-woman play based on the life of Pearl S. Buck, "All Under Heaven" that played in New York, Los Angeles, and across the country. She recently portrayed Tallulah Bankhead in the world premiere of "Looped".