A few incomplete 'Answers' don't hurt this play
In "The Lady With All the Answers," Ann Landers the character addresses the audience the same way Ann Landers the advice columnist addressed her readers: with a combination of genuine affection, common sense and homespun humor.
The latter she delivers in the form of such idiosyncratic aphorisms as "blood may be thicker than water, but it boils faster" and "a good marriage is made in heaven …but the maintenance work must be done down here" in playwright David Rambo's funny and heartwarming tribute to the iconic advice columnist in its Midwest premiere at Northlight Theatre.
Much of its success rests with film veteran and Tony Award winner and onetime Northlight resident artist Judith Ivey and Northlight artistic director BJ Jones, former colleagues whose combined talents -- Ivey's moving, concisely drawn performance encompassing wit and regret, and Jones' graceful, understated direction -- make for engaging theater.
Rambo's one-woman bio-drama unfolds over a late June evening in 1975 in a gracious Lake Shore Drive apartment -- a well-appointed room by set designer Tom Burch pairing rich mahogany and pale pastels with a crystal chandelier and a smattering of antiques. In the middle of the living room stands the smartly dressed, fiftysomething Eppie Lederer (expertly conjured by the virtuosic Ivey with pursed lips and raised eyebrow, unadorned Midwestern drawl, helmet hair and oversize glasses).
From 1955 until her death in 2002, Lederer wrote under the Ann Landers pseudonym, dispensing advice to readers who "had no where else to turn": troubled teens grappling with their sexuality, troubled couples grappling with unhappy marriages and meddling houseguests troubled about the way their host hung the toilet paper roll.
With a deadline looming, she grapples with her most personal column yet. She alternates writing the column, with reading over old letters and reminiscing about her life and career revealing a quipster with common sense and enviable contacts, whose changing attitudes mirrored to some extent America's shifting social and philosophical values.
Rambo doesn't demand much of his audience which he casts in the role of trusted confident in a one-sided conversation. Adopting a kid gloves approach toward his subject, he never really delves into her personal life and troubled marriage and he mostly skirts her feud with twin sister Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby), who began writing a competing advice column shortly after Lederer became Landers.
If as a complete biography, the touching "The Lady With All the Answers" comes up short, it most certainly succeeds as a lively portrait of resilience and conviction of a woman who made giving advice an art.
"The Lady With All the Answers"
Rating: 3 stars out of four
Location: Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Times: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays (except June 10) and Thursdays; 1 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays through June 29
Running Time: About 1 hour, 40 minutes with intermission
Tickets: $35- $55
Parking: Free lot adjacent to theater
Box office: (847) 673-6300 or northlight.org
Rating: For most audiences