Jay Goede Will Be Valerie Harper's Foil in Looped, at Arena Stage

By Kenneth Jones
16 Mar 2009

Jay Goede
Jay Goede

Jay Goede, known for his work on Broadway in Angels in America, A Year with Frog and Toad and Sex and Longing, will play opposite Valerie Harper in the pre-Broadway staging of Looped, a play about Tallulah Bankhead directed by Rob Ruggiero, at Arena Stage.

Goede replaces Chad Allen for the May 29-June 28 Arena run at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC.

"As the play has evolved, I found it necessary to reconstruct the character of Danny Miller," Lombardo said in a statement. "And although the previously announced Chad Allen is a fine talent, the demands of the play now require a different actor in the role. And I am extremely excited to have the remarkably gifted Broadway veteran Jay Goede joining our production."

Created by Lombardo, writer of the hit play Tea at Five (about Katharine Hepburn), and directed by Ruggiero, director of Arena Stage's Ella, Looped "tells the story of actress Tallulah Bankhead, the original celebrity bad girl, who stumbles into a film studio session to re-record (or 'loop') one line of dialogue for her final film, 'Die, Die My Darling.' What ensues is a showdown between an uptight sound editor, Danny Miller, and the outrageous legend. Southern, but by no means a belle, Ms. Bankhead was known for her wild partying that out-shone even today's superstars, including innumerable affairs with both male and female celebrities and outlandish exploits that were even investigated by the British secret service."

Harper (Tallulah Bankhead) is a four-time Emmy Award winner famous for playing Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the spin-off series, "Rhoda." In 2000, she reprised the role of Rhoda Morgenstern (along with Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards) in the ABC television movie "Mary and Rhoda," which attracted nearly 18 million viewers. She performed with various companies of Second City and Story Theatre in many venues all over the country and in Canada. In 1970 she was a member of the original stage production of Story Theater in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum and opened with the show in New York when it moved to Broadway. During the run at the Ambassador Theater, Paul Sills opened his second production: Ovid's Metamorphoses, also featuring Harper, to run in repertory with Story Theater. In the mid-1970s she played Los Angeles' James Doolittle Theatre and later toured in Dear Liar with Anthony Zerbe.

In 1983 she toured Florida with Zev Bufman's production of Agnes of God, playing The Psychiatrist. In the mid-'90s she starred in the New York production of Death Defying Acts by Elaine May and Woody Allen. She and her husband, Tony Cacciotti, began developing a one-woman play based on the life and work of Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize-winning author of, among many works, "The Good Earth." She co-wrote and performed the play All Under Heaven in New York (1999), in Los Angeles (2000) and across the country. In 2001 Harper was back on Broadway starring in Charles Busch's comedy The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. She played "the Wife" (Marjorie Taub) for a year on Broadway and then for another year in the national tour. Having completed her cross-country tour of Golda's Balcony, Harper is continuing as Golda Meir for the film version of William Gibson's play.

Looped is being produced by Tony Cacciotti and David Steiner in association with Arena Stage.

For ticket information call (202) 488-3300 or visit www.arenastage.org.