Harper, Hutchison and Mulheren Are 'Looped' Trio for Broadway

The producers of Looped, the new Broadway ball about a late-career Tallulah Bankhead, accepted that Brian Hutchison and Michael Mulheren will accompany Valerie Harper in the play, which begins previews Feb. 19 and opens March 14 at the Lyceum Theatre.

Playbill.com's PlayBlog aboriginal appear this account Jan. 4.

Matthew Lombardo's Looped, directed by Rob Ruggiero (Ella), "tells the adventure of Tallulah Bankhead [played by Harper], the internationally acclaimed actress, actuality alleged into a complete flat in 1965 to re-record (or 'loop') one band of chat for what would be her aftermost blur - the abominable Die! Die! My Darling.' Southern, but by no agency a belle, Ms. Bankhead was accepted for her agrarian partying and convention-defying exploits that surpassed alike today's celebrity bad girls. Given her inebriated accompaniment and disability to bend the band properly, what ensues is an bouncy showdown amid an anxious blur editor [Hutchison] and the abandoned legend."

The producers are Tony Cacciotti, Chase Mishkin, David Steiner and Leonard Soloway. The artistic aggregation for Looped includes set artist Adrian W. Jones, apparel artist William Ivey Long, wig artist Charles LaPointe, lighting artist Ken Billington and complete artist Michael Hooker/Peter Fitzgerald.

Harper is a four-time Emmy Award champ acclaimed for arena Rhoda Morgenstern on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the aftereffect series, "Rhoda." In 2000, she reprised the role of Rhoda Morgenstern (along with Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards) in the ABC television cine "Mary and Rhoda," which admiring about 18 actor viewers. She performed with assorted companies of Additional City and Adventure Theatre in abounding venues all over the country and in Canada. In 1970 she was a affiliate of the aboriginal date assembly of Story Theater in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum and on Broadway. During the run at the Ambassador Theater, Paul Sills opened his additional production: Ovid's Metamorphoses, additionally featuring Harper, to run in repertory with Story Theater. In the mid-1970s she played Los Angeles' James Doolittle Theatre and after toured in Dear Liar with Anthony Zerbe. She and her husband, Tony Cacciotti, began developing a one-woman ball based on the activity and assignment of Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize-winning columnist of, amid abounding works, "The Good Earth." She co-wrote and performed that ball All Under Heaven (directed by Ruggiero) in New York (1999), in Los Angeles (2000) and beyond the country. In 2001 Harper was aback on Broadway starring in Charles Busch's ball The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. She played "the Wife" (Marjorie Taub) for a year on Broadway and again for addition year in the civic tour. Having completed her cross-country bout of Golda's Balcony, Harper is continuing as Golda Meir for the blur adaptation of William Gibson's play.

Hutchison afresh appeared on Broadway in Exit the King. His added Broadway credits are The Invention of Love and Proof. Off-Broadway credits accommodate From Up Here; Oh The Humanity; Mr. Marmalade; Bodies Be Heard; Indoor/Outdoor; The Hiding Place; Theophilus North; Can't Let Go and She Stoops to Conquer.

Mulheren has appeared on Broadway in The Farnsworth Invention, Deuce, La Cage aux Folles, The Boy from Oz, Kiss Me, Kate (Tony, Drama Desk nominations), Titanic and On the Waterfront, additional Encores! productions of Damn Yankees, Do Re Mi, Li'l Abner and Of Thee I Sing.

Lombardo is the columnist of Tea at Five, the biographical ball about Katharine Hepburn. Ruggiero directed the apple premiere of Looped at Pasadena Playhouse, as able-bodied as the productions that played both The Cuillo Centre and Arena Stage.

Tallulah Bankhead (1902-68) was the outspoken, adventuresome and antiquated blur and date brilliant whose acclaimed roles accommodate Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth, Regina in The Little Foxes and Blanche Du Bois in a 1956 City Center assembly of A Streetcar Named Desire. Her address was so accomplished that bodies generally anticipation she was British; she was, in fact, a built-in of Alabama. She was nominated for a Best Extra Tony in 1961 for the ball Midgie Purvis.

The Lyceum Theatre is at 149 W. 45th Street. Looped will ball Tuesday at 7 PM, Wednesday-Friday at 8 PM, Wednesday at 2 PM, Saturday at 2 & 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM.

For added information, visit www.loopedonbroadway.com.